ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Digital archiving

Deanna Marcum is President of the Council on Library and Information Resources, e-mail: dmarcum@clir.org

Whose responsibility is it?

In the world of paper, preservation has been the clear responsibility of libraries.

While not every library has made it a high priority, many institutions—individually or consortially—have committed resources to preserving the materials they have acquired that have long-term value. However, this model of preserving acquired materials does not apply easily to electronic journals, which publishers typically license to libraries for use.

Because so much of the scholarly record is found in journal articles, and because libraries are relying more on providing access to the electronic versions than on acquiring the paper copies, there is growing interest in establishing archival repositories for electronic journals.

In 1996, the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the Commission on Preservation and Access issued a report, “Preserving Digital Information,” based on the work of the Task Force on Archiving Digital Information, co-chaired by Donald Waters and John Garrett. The task force recommended the establishment of certified digital archives— agencies that spell out how they are preserving digital objects and that can be held accountable for fulfilling their promise. The task force also called for a fail-safe legal mechanism that would allow these certified archives to rescue digital files that are in danger of being lost.

Perhaps the call for such a formal mechanism was too jarring to the library community four years ago for specific steps to be taken. However, as libraries rely increasingly on licenses for electronic journals, both librarians and publishers have become more aware of the potential problems. When negotiating licenses, librarians are quick to ask what the publisher has done to ensure longterm access to the material. Since libraries traditionally have financed preservation, publishers have been forced to consider new business models that include the cost of preserving digital information.

Who is responsible for archiving?

Archiving should be accomplished through a set of Standards and practices set out jointly by librarians and publishers. To be of lasting value, electronic journals must become part of the permanent intellectual record. Archiving efforts must take into consideration all the parties involved—readers, authors, publishers, libraries, and the scholarly community.

To be successful, an agreement must be reached that allows publishers to make a profit, libraries to provide ongoing access, and users to take advantage of intellectual content.

In much the same way that Standard practices are in place for print sources, parallel mechanisms must be implemented for electronic journals.

Who is working on projects and models?

RLG, OCLC, and several international groups are deeply engaged in digital archiving. RLG, OCLC, and the Cedars Project (UK) are actively exploring metadata Standards for digital objects. An international workshop on the subject is scheduled for late fall.

CLIR has commissioned several reports on approaches to digital archiving.¹ Individual institutions concerned about both “born digital” materials and their reformatted digital collections are setting requirements for archival repositories.

Despite all of the good work that these organizations have done to define the problems and suggest possible solutions, there has been a dearth of digital archival repository experience to guide us.

CLIR, in collaboration with the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), convened a meeting of librarians and publishers in the fall of 1999 to ans wer the question, “What would be required to make electronic Journals accessible for 100 years?” (We are confident that print materials that have been reformatted to microfilm will last a Century.)

Following the initial meeting, CNI hosted a workshop on the subject for a larger number of libraries and publishers. The participants, working from the premise that it is necessary to create a Standard for digital repositories, discussed what that Standard should entail.

About the editors

Ivy Anderson is coordinator for Digital Acquisitions at Harvard University, e-mail: ivy_anderson@harvard.edu; Gail McMillan is head of the Digital Library and Archives (formerly the Scholarly Communications Project) at Virginia Tech University, email: gailmac@vt.edu; Ann Schaffner has been an academic librarian for more than 20 years and is currentlya full time MBA Student at Simmons College, e-mail: ann.schaffner@simmons.edu

At this workshop, the participants explored technical, practical, and theoretical questions. The group was asked to consider whether a Statement regarding acceptable formats should be released, whether best practices should be defined, and what makes one journal more suitable for archiving than another. Other issues brought to the forefront included how the repository would function financially and how to establish a minimum level of public access.

The discussions were difficult because the stakes are high for all parties. To make progress, we concluded that it was important to consider the publishers’ and librarians’ views separately. To provide a point of departure for the discussions, Dan Greenstein, director of the Digital Library Federation, and I extracted minimum criteria for archival repositories of electronic journals from the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model and modified them to reflect the specific needs of the library, publishing, and academic communities.²

The eight criteria set forth highlight the importance of working together with publishers to create an environment where the free flow of information will benefit all parties. Agreed-upon minimum criteria are essential to ensure the preservation of intellectual content.

Proposed minimum specifications

The archival repository must exist as a trusted third party that conforms to minimum requirements that both scholarly publishers and libraries agree upon. This will provide a benchmark against which service can be measured, validated, and, above all, trusted by the libraries and publishers that rely upon them.

The repository will define its mission with regard to the needs of scholarly publishers and research libraries. Repositories will also be explicit about which publications they are willing to archive. A repository needs to spell out the scope and nature of materials it aims to collect, the strategy and methods it adopts for developing its collections (attracting deposits), and the community of libraries and other users it seeks to serve. Registries should also be developed that document what scholarly publications are archived and where.

Once an agreement is reached, the repository will have sufficient control of deposited information to ensure its long-term preservation. The repository will negotiate and accept appropriate deposits from scholarly publishers. It will negotiate the requisite perpetual licenses and rights, even as they change over time. The repository will follow documented policies and procedures that ensure the information is preserved against all reasonable contingencies and that enable the information to be disseminated as authenticated copies of the original or as traceable to the original. Because preservation practices are likely to vary across repositories, it may be useful to request that participants in any such coordinated effort agree to document the practices they adopt and make them available for community review and evaluation.

The repository will make preserved information available to libraries. Publishers seem willing to deposit electronic content in archival repositories only under certain conditions. Although repositories will, need to support access at some level, they should not replace the normal operating services through which digital scholarly publications are typically made accessible to end users. The repository will ensure that data can be disseminated to libraries in a renderable form. At a minimum, libraries should be able to create end-user services appropriate to the disseminated data and to do so independently of any assistance from those who initially produced the data.

Repositories will work as part of a network. Libraries may benefit from common finding aids, access mechanisms, and registry services that are supported by a network and allow uniform identification and access to information. Publishers may benefit from having access to a single repository or group of repositories that specialize in publications of a particular type and the cost effectiveness that results from such a network.

Technical requirements

Without an established minimum criterion for preserving electronic journals, multiple overlapping versions in fragile, rapidly changing environments are at risk of loss. The solution is to create a system that allows for technical growth.

Everyone agrees that redundancy is essential. By requiring three separate, independent facilities to act as repositories, the documents can be protected from human error and natural disaster. If at least two of these repositories exist in different countries, governmental policies that may interfere with content are no longer a concem. Regardless of the technological implementation chosen, the materials must exist in a safe haven where they can be accessed over time.

How access should change or not change in the networked environment is central to the issue of technical development. Once Standards are set, a number of events will occur. Publishers can make business decisions about the electronic format. Libraries will be forced to evaluate the archivability of electronic joumals when making decisions about purchasing and collection development. Authors will have better information for establishing expectations about the long-term availability of potential Publishing venues for their works. Scholarly societies designing electronic Publishing programs will have guidelines for addressing questions of archivability of their publications.

Once disseminated, these copies can potentially be maintained in perpetuity without further permission from or even interaction with the publisher. One major caveat is the need to ensure a limited level of permanent public access to these copies by the broad scholarly community while the work remains under Copyright. Protocols must be set to recreate these mechanisms for electronic journals. Once Copyright has expired, the materials must remain accessible.

How can individual librarians make a difference?

With so much of the scholarly record now being distributed in electronic form, we risk losing an entire generation of accumulated knowledge. If no one is certain whose responsibility it is to preserve electronic joumals, no one will be responsible. Publishers recognize that librarians are concemed about this issue, and they are, happily, beginning to issue their policies about digital archiving.

Librarians must take steps in their own institutions to ensure that their digital collections are safely stored in archives that conform to agreed-upon specifications for longterm storage.

We can also make a difference by being informed about the complexities of digital archiving and making sure that there are meaningful actions behind publishers’ and vendors’ words. If we do so, libraries will continue to play an essential role in the archiving of digital materials.

Notes

1. CLIR’s reports on approaches to digital archiving can be consulted on the Web at www.clir.org.
2. Visit http://www.clir.org/diglib/preserve/criteria.htm for more information about the minimum criteria for archival repositories of electronic journals. ■