The PKP Preservation Network: A Free, Sustainable Preservation Service for OJS Journals

The PKP Preservation Network: A Free, Sustainable Preservation Service for OJS Journals. Bronwen Sprout and Mark Jordan. Poster, iPres 2018. 
     The PKP Preservation Network offers free preservation to any journal running Open Journal Systems (OJS) that has an ISSN. As of September 2018, 856 journals have deposited 22,549 issues into the network. The network is administered by the Public Knowledge Project and supported by partners who are running preservation nodes, along with an Advisory Panel. Future development will allow it to preserve supplemental and linked content

Journal deposit into the dark archive is fully automated through an OJS plugin. The content is harvested and processed by a staging server and then stored in a LOCKSS network.  In case of a trigger event, a journal's content will be republished for public access.

PKP Preservation Network

Digital Preservation Matters.

EBSCO and Portico collaborate to preserve collections

EBSCO and Portico collaborate to preserve collections. Press Release.  Research Information. 4 September 2015.   
     EBSCO Information Services is partnering with Portico to preserve collections from its Digital Archives products and to ensure uninterrupted access to the historical content in these collections.
"The commitment that EBSCO has made to guarantee the long-term availability of its digital archives is a great benefit to the scholarly community and Portico is very pleased to be working with EBSCO to preserve this valued content."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Mapping the Digital Galaxy: The Keepers Registry Expands its Tool Kit

Mapping the Digital Galaxy: The Keepers Registry Expands its Tool Kit. Erin Engle.  The Signal. Library of Congress. August 5, 2015.
     The Keepers Registry released a new version of its website with a suite of new features to help  monitor the archival status of e-journals. The Keepers Registry enables librarians and information managers to discover which journals and continuing resources are being looked after, by whom and how.Before this there was no systematic way with easily accessible information about what is happening for individual journals and issues and volumes, not just serial titles. This is important when archiving digital content from serials and other continuing resources.
 
Related posts:

• Scoping study for a registry of electronic journals. 07 March 2008
• IIPC has released a web archives registry - February 16, 2010

Digital Preservation Matters.

National Library of the Netherlands-Portico Partnership at the Forefront of Digital Preservation and International Collaboration

National Library of the Netherlands-Portico Partnership at the Forefront of Digital Preservation and International Collaboration. Portico Press release. 28 May 2015.  
The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Portico created a new partnership that will  preserve e-journals through the KB’s e-Depot program, which preserves locally published content in the Netherlands. The program focuses on the preservation of e-journals from international scientific publishers and  “At the KB, our preservation strategy has been to use a variety of solutions and tools, and not rely on any single method.” Portico has been a key collaborator in their preservation work over the years.

The e-Depot already preserves more than 15 million e-journal articles. Portico will provide the KB with preservation-formatted e-journal content from scientific publishers who are new to the program including BioOne, Walter de Gruyter, Wolters Kluwer, Karger, Brill, and Thieme. An e-journal trigger event would allow the KB would provide journal access to Dutch researchers.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Preserving eBooks

Preserving eBooks. Amy Kirchhoff and Sheila Morrissey. DPC Technology Watch Report 14-01. 01 June 2014.
There is some question as to whether one can even speak of ‘selling’ and, correspondingly, ‘owning’ eBooks. The right to permanent possession, including perpetual access and preservation rights, is the exception rather than the norm in eBook licensing.Libraries and publishers are still experimenting with how to purchase or license eBooks and then how to lend them to patrons

There is concern about the possibility of modification, retraction or withdrawal of an eBook. This
happened in 2009 when Amazon deleted some editions from customers who had purchased some eBooks. Memory institutions need to be able to ensure the stability of eBook content in their collections and maintain control over any withdrawal or de-accessioning of that content.

Preservation of eBooks is not free. It is expensive to identify content for preservation, gather it, perform initial actions on it, and then preserve that content for the long term. Some approaches that exist are:

• Collective model. Such as HathiTrust.
• Subscription service. Portico 
• Government support. The national libraries of the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, etc.

Some of the general formats used for eBook Publication include:

• HTML
• PDF
• MOBI
• EPUB4
• OEB (Open eBook Publication Structure) superseded by EPUB
• Microsoft LIT50
• DAISY
• Text Encoding Initiative

Recommended Actions for Libraries and other institutions:

• Specify who has responsibility for preserving eBook content 
• Co-ordinate with other institutions, to eliminate preservation gaps and avoid duplicating efforts
• When acquiring or licensing eBook content, ensure the acquisition includes preservation rights, and prohibits DRM technologies in the preservation copy acquired from the vendor;
• Consider and understand what preservation rights are provided when eBooks are licensed and exactly how long-term access will be ensured by the publisher;
• Articulate preservation policies for the handling of embedded objects, including articulation of legal rights to the content, and workflow requirements to ascertain preservation risks for that embedded content;
• Encourage publishers to participate in preservation institutions to ensure the long-term viability of their eBook content; and
• Invest in maturing existing characterization tools, and extending the toolset. Establish whether there is a preservation requirement somehow to maintain the hardware,

Digital Preservation Matters.

Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Chemists.

Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Chemists.  February 25, 2013. Matthew P. Long, Roger C. Schonfeld. Ithaka S+R. February 26, 2013. [PDF]

This report, intended for those who support chemists, including librarians, is about the latest research methods, practices, and information services needs of academics chemists. Chemists need services to make their lives easier and their research groups more productive; this includes minimizing paperwork and administrative tasks. They value academic libraries primarily for the access that they provide to electronic journals and other online resources. Researchers are often frustrated by an inability to share large amounts of data with a collaborator. Few chemists visit the physical library, but they use the library digital collections heavily.

In the survey, fewer than 10% reported a research consultation with a librarian, asked for help with a data management, or asked for assistance on an issue related to publishing in the past year; they rarely reach out to the library to discuss issues or request support. The main search sites for chemists are Web of Knowledge/Web of  Science, SciFinder, and PubMed. It would be helpful to have tools to help process all of this information,  a pre-scan of announcements from journals, and organize their materials. Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) make it easy to share, archive, and search through past lab notes, but are at risk in the lab. Labs generally do not have good data management infrastructure or proper external support for developing it, especially in sharing and preserving files.

It is difficult for academic chemists to coordinate the recording and preservation of data after the completion of a project. When data are saved, they are often held in unstable or at-risk formats  or in formats where no one else can access or interpret them. Sometimes a large amount of potentially useful data is not shared or preserved in any durable way. One chemist invited the library to come and speak to the department about preservation and access. Chemists have a general lack of awareness of  effective data curation and preservation. Data management and preservation is time-consuming and rarely straightforward; it requires expert advice and constant monitoring.

The findings:

1. Chemists need better support in data management, sharing and preservation.
2.  Many researchers remain anxious about keeping up with the newest literature.
3. They need new tools to stay aware of new research and also serendipitous discovery.
4. Chemists  require greater support in disseminating their research, including articles, data, and other materials.

Other areas of concern for academic chemists : laboratory management, gaining access to industrial funding, and teaching support.

We see some real potential for the academic library to stretch the definition of the services it offers to the academic chemist. The library may also have a role in working with other service providers and ensuring that academics are aware of the latest research tools. It is clear from this project that libraries must think strategically about whether and how to invest in services for chemists.
 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Research Archive Widens Its Public Access—a Bit

Research Archive Widens Its Public Access—a Bit. Editorial. Technology Review.  7 September 2011.
JStor, an organization which maintains link to 1,400 journals for subscribing institutions, is providing free public access to articles published prior to 1923 in the United States or before 1870 in other countries, about 6 percent of its content. In a letter to publishers and libraries, JStor refers to plans for "further access to individuals in the future."

Digital Preservation Matters - April 16, 2010

State Of America's Libraries Report 2010. American Library Association. April 11, 2010.

Interesting report about libraries. As the recession continues, Americans turn to libraries in ever larger numbers for access to resources for employment, continuing education, and government services. The local library has become a lifeline of resources, training and workshops. Even in the age of Google, academic libraries are being used more than ever. During a typical week in fiscal 2008, academic libraries in the United States had more than 20.3 million visits, answered more than 1.1 million reference questions, and made more than 498,000 presentations to groups attended by more than 8.9 million students and faculty, increases over the previous years. Over 43% of libraries provide access to locally produced digitized collections.

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A National Conversation on the Economic Sustainability of Digital Information. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. April 1, 2010. [Silverlight video.]

This page has the agenda and video presentations from A National Conversation on the Economic Sustainability of Digital Information, a recent meeting hosted by the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access.

BRTF's Featured Agenda and Presentations:

• Research Data, Daniel E. Atkins, Wayne Clough,
• Scholarly Discourse, Derek Law, Brian Schottlaender,
• Economics of Collectively-Created Content, George Oates, Timo Hannay
• Commercially-owned Cultural Content, Chris Lacinak, Jon Landau
• Economics of Digital Information, William G. Bowen, Hal R. Varian, Dan Rubinfeld
• Summary by Clifford Lynch.

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How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive. Matt Raymond. Blog. Library of Congress. April 14, 2010.

The Library of Congress is digitally archiving every public tweet made since Twitter started in 2006. "Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition." Amazing to think what we can "learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I'm certain we'll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive." The Library of Congress has been archiving information from the web since 2000. It now has more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs and political websites.

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Library of Congress: We're archiving every tweet ever made. Nate Anderson. Ars Technica. April 16, 2010.

Comments about the Library of Congress archiving tweets:

• There's been a turn toward historicism in academic circles over the last few decades, a turn that emphasizes not just official histories and novels but the diaries of women who never wrote for publication, or the oral histories of soldiers from the Civil War, or the letters written by a sawmill owner. The idea is to better understand the context of a time and place, to understand the way that all kinds of people thought and lived, and to get away from an older scholarship that privileged the productions of (usually) elite males."
• Digital technologies pose a problem for the Library and other archival institutions, though. By making data so easy to generate and then record, they push archives to think hard about their missions and adapt to new technical challenges."

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Aligning Investments with the Digital Evolution: Results of 2009 Faculty Survey Released. Roger C. Schonfeld, Ross Housewright. Ithaka. April 07, 2010. [37p. PDF]

An excellent report for academic libraries especially, Faculty Survey 2009: Strategic Insights for Librarians, Publishers, and Societies, that looks at faculty attitudes towards the academic library, information resources, and the scholarly communications system. A few quotes from the report:

• Faculty most often turn to network-level services, including both general purpose search engines and services targeted specifically to academia.
• Of all disciplines, scientists remain the least likely to utilize library-specific starting points;
• Network-level services are increasingly important for discovery, not only of monographs and journals but archival resources and other primary source collections.
• The library must evolve to meet these changing needs.
• 90% of faculty members view the library buyer role as very important, 71% and 59% now view the archive and gateway roles as very important, respectively. Archiving is the 2^nd highest role.
• Despite the reported declines in importance of all the library's roles other than as a buyer, the 2009 study saw a slight rise in perceived dependence on the library
• The declining visibility and importance of traditional roles for the library and the librarian may lead to faculty primarily perceiving the library as a budget line, rather than as an active intellectual partner.
• Faculty members most strongly support and appreciate the library's infrastructural roles, in which it acquires and maintains collections of materials on their behalf.
• Faculty members sense of the significance of long-term preservation of electronic journals has steadily increased over time
• Effective and sustainable models for the preservation of electronic journals must be developed
• Scholars, regardless of field, indicate a general preference that digital materials be preserved.
• Less than 30% of faculty members have deposited any scholarly material into a repository; nearly 50% have not deposited but hope to do so in the future
• Faculty attitudes and practices are at the strategic core. Greater engagement with and support of trailblazing faculty disciplines may help develop the roles and services to serve faculty needs into the future. The institutions that serve faculty must also anticipate them, both to ensure that the 21st century information needs of faculty are met and to secure their own relevance for the future.

Digital Preservation Matters - February 8, 2010

Online Recordkeeping: It's All in a Name. Mimi Dionne. Internet Evolution. February 2, 2010.

The born-digital record lifecycle has five stages, in chronological order: creation; distribution and use; storage and maintenance; retention; and disposition or archival preservation. All five stages are important. One of the best practices for born-digital records is uniform file naming protocols, including location, to encourage strong content management. These should align with the records retention policies. Organizations are better off if they select the information they need to retain and destroy what they don’t need. “The benefits of implementing a records program that includes regular records destruction have far-reaching influence not only on compliance issues and maintenance of a company’s IT environment but also the health of its budget.”

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SPIE to Preserve E-Books in Portico. Press Release. Portico. 2 February 2010.

Portico has agreed with SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics) to preserve its collection of e-books, currently 93 items. It already participates with Portico to preserve its e-journals. Portico now holds over 34,000 e-books and over 10,000 e-journals. The SPIE has also announced the launch of their digital library, which includes 120 SPIE Press titles from the Field Guides, Monographs, and Tutorial Texts series.

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Long-Term Preservation Of Web Archives – Experimenting With Emulation And Migration Methodologies. Andrew Stawowczyk Long. IIPC. December 2009. [54 p. PDF]

The decision to emulate or migration are largely based on personal beliefs, rather than on any particular evidence. We do not know which of these is more useful in the long term. All objects change over time, so ensuring long-term, useful access to collections requires we first define the most important aspects of an object that needs to be preserved. The “Preservation Intent” may be useful for this, which is what the institution intends to preserve for any given digital object and for how long. Also needed is the creator’s intent, the contextual information and the technical information.

Two possible approaches for institutions may be:

1. preserve digital objects over the next twenty years;
2. find means of preserving objects for longer.

Or an approach may include both: preserve items for 20 years while the search for longer preservation mechanisms continues. “Significant properties” means the properties of a digital object that are essential to the representation of the intended meaning of that object.

The author does not recommend either emulation or migration as a perfect solution to the problem at this current time. Also, their findings and recommendations include:

1. There are no tools suitable for long-term preservation of very large web archives
2. All preservation actions need to be based on a clearly defined “Preservation Intent”
3. Migration and emulation offer some time extensions to for short term access to digital objects.
4. Emulation seems to present higher risks as a long-term preservation methodology.

It is not possible to preserve it all. Priorities need to be established for practical, long-term preservation solutions. The best hope for adequate long-term preservation, lies in continuous and systematic work, researching various preservation methodologies, and improving our understanding of the future use of web archives.

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Is NAND flash about to hit a dead end? Lucas Mearian. Computerworld. February 4, 2010.

IM Flash Technologies has said that shrinking the technology much further may not be possible because of problems with bit errors and reliability. The number of electrons that can be stored in the memory cell decreases with each generation of flash memory, making it more difficult for the cells to reliably retain data.

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CNRI Digital Object Repository™. Corporation for National Research Initiatives. 19 January 2010.

(CNRI) has developed a new version of its Digital Object Repository Software. It is open source, flexible, scalable, secure, and has a suite that provides a common interface for accessing all types of digital objects. Redundancy is supported by a mirroring system with software to ensure that replicated objects are kept in sync.