Who is looking after your e-journals?

Telling Tales About The Keepers Registry & Your Digital Shelves

Peter Burnhill & Françoise PelleEDINA, University of Edinburgh, UK

ISSN International Centre / Centre International de l'ISSN, Paris, France

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

IFLA World Library and Information Congress, Singapore, August 2013: Congress track 5: Ideas, innovations, anticipating the new

Agile management: strategies for achieving success in rapidly changing times (Session 98)

‘Knowledge Management’ and ‘Academic & Research Libraries’

Knowledge Management and

3. UNESCO “The Memory of the World in the Digital age: Digitization and Preservation”: preservation … of digital documentary heritage.

September 2012, Vancouver (with IFLA/ICA)

“Unless digital preservation becomes a development priority … the risk of digital records not surviving for an appreciable length of time will increase”

Vancouver Declaration• recommended strategy, frameworks, copyright exceptions & limitations,

collaboration & training, standardization, format registries, products & leadership

Agile Management: strategies for achieving success in rapidly changing times delight (not disappoint) customers; self-organising teams;

dynamic linking; values for innovation over long term; stories & conversation, not commands; measuring outcomes (outside in); re-thinking timeframe & objectives

:1. IFLA Key Initiative 1 - Digital Content Programme

2. IFLA Strategic Programme on Preservation and Conservation (PAC)

Academic & Research Libraries

… is to ensure ease and continuity of access to the scholarly & cultural record 

And we all know what has changed …• a significant/growing proportion of that scholarly & cultural

record is in digital format and available across the Web

First, The Good News What was once availably locally is now online & accessed remotely, anytime/anywhere

Now The Bad News! Academic libraries are no longer the custodians of the scholarly record

– What is on the Web one day is changed or disappeared the next

– We need to invest in some digital shelves!

Key task for academic & research libraries

Focus on international challenge of e-journals

Researchers (and therefore libraries) in any one country are dependent upon content written and published in other countries

US.LoC 20%

UK.BL 10%

‘hidden’ e-journals: low % ISSN

Netherlands & Germany: c. 4.5% each

Brazil 4%

%age of the 100,000 ISSN issued for e-serials

Many Reports over past 10 Years …

They highlighted risks in digital media & formats:• ‘digital decay’: format obsolescence & bit rot

and warned against single points of failure: • natural disasters (earthquake, fire and flood)• human folly (criminal and political action): hacking

+ risks associated with commercial events in the publisher/supply chain

• eDepot at Koninklijke Bibliotheek• international significance (Elsevier & Kluwer) as well as national

role for The Netherlands)• the LOCKSS project at Stanford University

• from which came CLOCKSS • the Electronic-Archiving Initiative at JSTOR

• from which came Portico

… as early archiving initiatives emerged

Many Reports over past 10 Years …

They highlighted risks in digital media & formats:• ‘digital decay’: format obsolescence & bit rot

and warned against single points of failure: • natural disasters (earthquake, fire and flood)• human folly (criminal and political action): hacking

+ risks associated with commercial events in the publisher/supply chain

• eDepot at Koninklijke Bibliotheek• international significance (Elsevier & Kluwer) as well as national

role for The Netherlands)• the LOCKSS project at Stanford University

• from which came CLOCKSS • the Electronic-Archiving Initiative at JSTOR

• from which came Portico

… as early archiving initiatives emerged

Those reports mentioned the idea of a Registry“by which it would be plain what content was being archived, and

therefore what was not” (CLIR Report, 2006)

In 2008, Jisc, acting on behalf of UK universities, commissioned a Study

which confirmed the need for such a Registry.

In 2009, EDINA & ISSN-IC began to design that Registry, working with e-Depot, LOCKSS, CLOCKSS & Portico

• We reported this at IFLA Gothenburg, 2010

ISSN Register

E-J Preservation Registry Service

E-Journal Preservation

Registry

SERVICES: user requirements

(a)

(b)Data dependency

ISSN-L as kernel field

METADATAon extant e-journals

METADATA on preservation action

ISSN Register at the heart of the Data Model(Taken from Figure 1 in reference paper in Serials, March 2009)

Digital Preservation Agencies

e.g. CLOCKSS, Portico; BL, KB; UK LOCKSS Alliance etc.

http://thekeepers.org

Enter title or ISSN

to search across metadata reported by leading archiving organisations

… to discover who is looking after what

9

… but coverage of volumes is partial & patchy

This e-journal is being archived by 5 archiving agencies …

Example search: ‘Origins of Life’

… and discover details of its ‘archival status’

Using metadata reported by all Keepers …

… we note that c.21,000 e-serials are reported as being ‘preserved’

=> Does this mean that 79% of the 100,000 e-serials assigned with ISSN are at risk of loss?

Look into the future with 2020 Vision …

• Best Case scenario for IFLA 2020 – Libraries (& Publishers) have acted to reduce that

alarming 79% figure down to near to zero – All e-journal content now used by researchers in 2013

has been preserved & can be successfully used in 2020, and assuredly beyond for future generations.

• Worst Case scenario for IFLA 2020– Libraries (& Publishers) have failed to act – Important literature has been lost – Citizens & scholars complain of neglect!

Reminder about the real heroes in the story, 3 types of Keeper:

① web-scale not-for-profit archiving agencies

e.g. CLOCKSS Archive* & Portico* [*project start]

② national libraries (sometimes with legal deposit in mind)

e.g. e-Depot* (Netherlands); British Library* & National Science Library of China

③ research libraries: consortia & specialist centres

e.g. Global LOCKSS Network*, HathiTrust, Scholars Portal, Archaeology Data Service

*news* US Library of Congress in process of joining

Many archiving organisations is a Good Thing

“Digital information is best preserved by replicating it at multiple archives run by autonomous organizations”

B. Cooper and H. Garcia-Molina (2002)

The Keepers Registry acts as the global lens onto their activity: so we can all know who is looking after what, and what is still at risk …

Kaisu!

What does the Registry tell about progress?• c.100,000 ISSN for online resources

– but expect / hope to identify many more

• Is there such thing as a ‘priority list’ of titles? – c.30,000 refereed scholarly journals

• Do we look at on what individual libraries list?– In 2012 we checked ‘archival status’ for 3 large university libraries

• Two key indicators: %age (& number) of titles that are ‘at risk of loss’ %age (& number) of titles that are ‘preserved by 3 or more Keepers’.

c.75%‘at risk’c.11% held by 3 or more

What does the Registry tell about progress?• c.100,000 ISSN for online resources

– but expect / hope to identify many more

• Is there such thing as a ‘priority list’ of titles? – c.30,000 refereed scholarly journals

• Do we look at on what individual libraries list?– In 2012 we checked ‘archival status’ for 3 large university libraries

• Two key indicators: %age (& number) of titles that are ‘at risk of loss’ %age (& number) of titles that are ‘preserved by 3 or more Keepers’.

c.75%‘at risk’c.11% held by 3 or more

*news* In new release of the online Registry, each and every library can ‘upload & compare’ to discover what of their

collection is being preserved, or is ‘at risk’.

Sidebar note on monitoring their progress … Your Priorities for The Keepers Registry?• Need to establish international, multi-sector governance

– building on Jisc funding, the Registry must command consensus & be sustainable over the long-term. Who then should govern & fund this?

1. Make sure the Keepers Registry serves your needs– Periodic report of those 2 key indicators: :

• %age (& number) of titles that are ‘at risk of loss’• %age (& number) of titles that are ‘preserved by 3 or more Keepers’

– Making clear terms of access to orphaned content• preferably available to all ‘open access’ across the Internet

– Listing the serial titles ‘at risk’

– Disclosing the relevant publishers to assist libraries & archiving agencies

– …

Sidebar note on monitoring their progress … Your Priorities for The Keepers Registry?• Need to establish international, multi-sector governance

– building on Jisc funding, the Registry must command consensus & be sustainable over the long-term. Who then should govern & fund this?

1. Make sure the Keepers Registry serves your needs

2. Keep a close focus on volumes & issues: this takes hard work!

3. Assist the ISSN Network assign more ISSN – If it is worth preserving, it should have an identifier: ‘hidden e-journals’

4. Encourage more organisations to be Keepers in the Registry– including every national library that acts as an archive

The Registry is not an audit / certification authority but need for eligibility checks for integrity of ‘archival intent’

5. Assist collaboration between Keepers in ‘a safe places network’: many are meeting at iPres 2013 in Lisbon in September

True meh uncle?

– Yes lah!

• More and more scholarly statement is issued on the Web• Often with no obvious ‘country of publication’

– New ‘scholarly objects’; rich in data or with dependent links to data– Increasing use of HTTP URL/URI to cite resources & work of others– Content at URI can and does change, or even cease to be

• R&D at Mellon-funded Hiberlink project at U. of Edinburgh / LANL

• and more and more is Open Access– issued in OA journals or via repositories such as Arkiv

• and then there is the Internet Archive, and figshare, and ..– Is someone else running the global library of the future?

But still necessary to preserve e-journal content! Still sufficient in the mainstream, although should also engage with the ‘new now’

Surely, Scholarly Record is more than e-journals?

<recap> Agile Management (for academic & research libraries): strategies for achieving success in rapidly changing times

1. delight (not disappoint) customers/patrons (researchers, students, teachers)– Ensure that there really is continuity of access in 2020 and beyond

• If not for e-journals, then who will believe you can do more challenging digital preservation?

2. enable self-organising teams– Give material support to more than one of the Keepers– Require publishers to entrust content to an archiving organisation

3. favour dynamic linking – Keepers to ‘publish’ holdings for machine-access (& terms of access)

• Keepers Registry to do likewise, to allow others to display ‘archival status’

4. measure outcome (from outside in): Use The Keepers Registry as lens

5. Shift to a set of values, that creates innovation over the long term: not just budgets & cost-effective access; not just national libraries as stewards

6. re-think time, re-think objective: regain the trust put in libraries!

7. implement with stories & conversation, not commands:– ‘Research libraries saved the day, because they acted to …’

Securing the future with 2020 Vision…

Actions needed to achieve good news at IFLA 2020 – to reduce that alarming 75% ‘at risk’ figure down towards zero

• Individual actions by each research library– give material support to one or more archiving agency– consider an ‘archive clause’ in licences

• requiring publishers to deposit content with an archiving organisation

• Collective actions – to develop that model ‘archive clause’ requiring deposit with an archive – to engage with publisher associations, internationally and nationally

• Many e-journals are from small publishers: ‘long tail problem’• Role for consortia and/or subscription agents?

– to act globally, not leaving matters to each country• Using legal deposit in national library as a back-up

• Use the Keepers Registry to monitor progress

  IFLA Key Initiative 1 - Digital Content Programme:

• to build a legal, technical & professional base that enables libraries to play a major role in collecting, preserving … to all types of physical & digital materials:

• digital preservation – with a focus on legal mechanisms [*] for harvesting and preserving born digital information and local content hosted on websites and in social media

Activities: Develop and endorse the IFLA Statement on Legal Deposit [*]

Pushing at an (IFLA) open door?

* Legal Deposit: a sidebar noteShould we wait upon that and action by National Libraries?• 44% national libraries had legislation in 2011 for e-books or e-

journals; expected to rise to 58% by June 2012.• But only 27% [expected to rise to 37% by June 2012] actually

ingesting via legal deposit

Others have collected by voluntary deposit (esp.Netherlands)

Key point is not to object to the call for ‘legal deposit’, but it is taking too much time, and is not sufficient Even if the slowness is usually down to the actions of government and

publishers, not the national libraries.

Only KB e-Depot, BL, NSLC (+ LoC) in The Keepers Registry Need to encourage others to join so we will all know about their activity

from presentation, CENL 2011 Survey by Lynne Brindley to CDNL Annual Meeting Puerto Rico, 15/8/11

*Reminder* Researchers (and therefore libraries) in any one country are dependent upon content written and published in other countries

  IFLA Key Initiative 1 - Digital Content Programme:

• to build a legal, technical & professional base that enables libraries to play a major role in collecting, preserving … to all types of physical & digital materials:

• digital preservation – with a focus on legal mechanisms [*] for harvesting and preserving born digital information and local content hosted on websites and in social media

Activities: Develop and endorse the IFLA Statement on Legal Deposit [*]

The Strategic Programme on Preservation and Conservation (PAC) “has one major goal : to ensure that library and archive materials… in all formats, will be preserved in accessible form for as long as possible according to the following principles : – preservation is essential for survival & development of culture &

scholarship – international cooperation is a key principle – each country must accept responsibility for the preservation of its

own publications. [yes, but …]

Pushing at an (IFLA) open door?

Identify

each content streamwith an ISSN

Thank you for listeningXie Xie Ni, Terima Kasih, Nandri

http://thekeepers.orgNew release in September

http://thekeepers.blogs.edina.ac.uk/