Final Reflection

As per the syllabus, this final post will be an "assessment of this reflective experience" and answer the following two questions:

What was your most important earlier entry and why has it been important for your personal development?

I feel that week 10's reflection was my more important entry.  That week's topic was "Finding Content: Discovery Tools" and was when I finally understood how OpenURL and FindIt work.  These tools are very important in libraries today as more and more resources are available electronically.  This understanding was even useful at work several times this semester.  I work at the reference/information desk at MERIT and was able to answer questions regarding why links sometimes go to the publisher's main page and sometimes to the individual article.  Furthermore, I realize now that FindIt isn't perfect and an article could be available electronically even if FindIt does not, well, find it.

How has your thinking about ERM changed over the semester?

I've realized how complicated it is to manage electronic resources such that entire software systems are created to aid in this task.  Prior to this semester, I had not thought much about electronic resource management and did not know that positions devoted entirely to this task existed.  When I used electronic resources as an undergraduate, I mostly took them for granted and did not think about the many difficulties involved in providing electronic resources for patrons. These include the fact that licenses must be negotiated including planning for perpetual access, resources must be linked so that patrons can easily find content with tools such as FindIt, and copyright related policies must be written to help prevent situations such as the Georgia case.  I am not sure if I am ready (or interested) in taking an electronic resource management position as my first professional position, but I feel prepared after taking this class to possibly work in this field in the future.

Week 13 - Perpetual Access

Notes again this week in preparation for the quiz:

"Portico: An Electronic Archiving Service" presentation by Eileen Fenton

• Provides an archive for electronic academic journals
• Started by JSTOR in 2005
• Separate from JSTOR so that it can preserve both JSTOR journals and others
• Not-for-profit
• Works to save "intellectual content" not "look and feel" on publisher's website
• Normalizes source file to an archival format
• One article may have 100 files of images in various qualities, text, etc.
• Access provided campus wide and remotely for libraries giving financial support
• Cost is based on total money spent on collection per year by a particular library
• Discounts used as incentive to provide support early (2006 and 2007)
• Publishers also pay for right to supply content
• Libraries get access to entire archive regardless of their individual journal subscriptions
• Journal issues only available on Portico when not available from publisher or other sources
• Portico can also provide perpetual access for an institution when it cancels a subscription
• Shared archive saves money vs. each library keeping own collection

"A Social Model for Archiving Digital Serials: LOCKSS" by Michael Seadle

• Open source software model instead of one not-for-profit institution
• Members contribute financially to support core programmers
• Issues in digital preservation
• Must be able to trust technology
• Need to preserve integrity and context of object
• Authenticity decided by comparing copies of "same" item and determining which copy is the most common
• Developed at Stanford
• 100 servers operating (2006)
• LOCKSS Technology
• Archive exact copy rather than normalized format
• Bitstream archiving seems to allow for migration to new file formats
• Each version of a journal kept as a separate object
• Need 6 or more copies to guarantee integrity
• Working towards metadata plugin with JHOVE, OAI, etc.
• Need to get permission from publishers before archiving contents
• Especially important to archive small publishers whose work is more likely to be lost

 "Preservation Concerns in the E-Resource Environment" by Jennifer Watson

• Accreditation for some programs now requires "access to information" not a physical library
• Why libraries compromise desire for perpetual access
• Patron pressure - More important to serve patrons than refuse licenses based on perpetual access
• Most content available in print (for now)
• Financial pressure
• Can't afford both digital and print copies
• Can't afford to hire staff to negotiate perpetual access
• Some publishers charge an access fee for perpetual access
• Difficult to store digital material because of large file sizes and obsolescence/migration
• Difficult to store online material
• Constantly changing
• Large volume of content
• Important to store online reference materials for historical research
• Initiatives in e-resource preservation- 3rd Parties
• JSTOR - Journal Storage
• subscription service that provides access to back issues after an embargo period
• LOCKSS - not normalizing data may lead to data becoming obsolete
• serve data during any outage of publisher's website
• Portico - assumes libraries do not want to manage long-term storage (ie LOCKSS)
• Does not accept post-publication changes
• Google Book Search
• PubMed Central - provides online life sciences journal content for free and makes backup copy in case of failure at publisher's website
• Initiatives in e-resource preservation - Libraries
• Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) member libraries purchase a single print copy of journal titles to preserve in CIC facilities
• Institutional repositories - version discrepancies for articles and lack of interest from authors
• National Library of the Netherlands takes responsibility for the country's digital preservation
• Also provides access to any licensee in the event the publisher cannot (calamities, bankruptcy)
• Initiatives in e-resource preservation - Publishers
• Many sign up with LOCKSS, Portico, JSTOR, and other initiatives mentioned above
• Publisher preservation initiatives are unreliable since publishers are bought, go out of business, and are profit motivated
• Initiatives in e-resource preservation - Governments
• Some require copy of all publications to be submitted to a legal repository
• Extend this legislation to e-resources
• Initiatives in e-resource preservation - Foundations
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Wellcome Trust provide funding

"From Dark Archive to Open Access: CLOCKSS Trigger Event Lessons" by Victoria Reich

• Controlled LOCKSS
• Similar trigger events as Portico
• Unlike Portico, triggered content is Open Access - provided to everyone for free
• Uses Creative Commons license
• Three volumes of Graft and Auto/Biography have been triggered
• 75% of use not identifiably academic
• Overall low use
• CrossRef is making CrossRef Multiple Resolution for triggered content
• Shows all archives where content is present

"Perpetual Access to Electronic Journals: A Survey of One Academic Research Library's Licenses" by J. Stemper and S. Barribeau

• Print retention projects - ensure that someone somewhere still has a complete run of a journal's print copy
• ex: CIC above
• Significant monetary investment, document delivery copyright issues, publishers may abandon print altogether
• Previous study in 2001 found that 22 out of 44 licenses granted perpetual access and 9 charged for this
• Previous ARL survey found that 44% were going e-only in 2003 but 85.4% did not see lack of perpetual access as a deal breaker
• Previous study by the authors found that 76% ask journal publishers for perpetual access but 76% still sign a license without assurance of such access
• Libraries seem not to take publishers up on their offer of LOCKSS access
• Libraries could use local data loading (ie CDs or LOCKSS) for perpetual access but format may become obsolete and this requires infrastructure and staffing costs
• Study of University of Minnesota licenses regarding perpetual access
• 64% grant perpetual access
• 72% of commercial and 56% of society publishers
• Print is an add-on to electronic now instead of the reverse
• Some licenses outright state no perpetual access or even require all downloaded copies to be deleted at the end of the subscription
• Some have a specific expiration parameter (5 years, 10 years, etc.)
• Aggregators rarely provide for continued access since their title lists and coverage frequently changes
• Of those granting perpetual access, 43.8% charge for this
• Roughly equal percentage of commercial and society publishers
• Typically paid to publisher but sometimes third party
• Fee is generally vague but occasionally specific (ie 10% of subscription cost)
• JSTOR does not grant perpetual access
• Continued access through publisher's own server and local data loading offered in equal numbers of licenses
• Many society publishers (71.4%) allow local data loading vs. 38.9% of commercial publishers
• Some specify that a third party will provide access
• 32% of studied publishers are partners with LOCKSS
• 6% of studied publishers are partners with Portico
• Only 1 publisher is a partner of both
• Some allow library to choose who will provide access
• Some licenses are intentionally vague regarding perpetual access
• Society publishers are not more likely to provide perpetual access than commercial publishers
• Cannot assume that library can safely cancel print version of journal included in a full-text aggregator database and retain access
• Libraries should consider making lack of perpetual access a deal breaker
• University of Maryland and University of California-Berkeley set precedent for this
• Consortia have enough economic leverage to possibly achieve this
• Libraries should budget for perpetual access
• JSTOR, Portico, publisher's back files, etc.
• Libraries should ask legal counsel whether perpetual access clause can stand up in court
• Need to include wording about publisher mergers