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Portico and Ithaka Digital Preservation Survey of U.S. Library Directors – Results Released
In September 2005, library directors from 17 universities and colleges met to discuss the current state of electronic journal preservation and endorsed a statement calling for “Urgent Action” to preserve scholarly e-journals. Over two years later in January 2008, in the Portico and Ithaka invited 1,371 library directors of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to respond to a survey examining current perspectives on preservation of e-journals. A strong response has yielded interesting findings that we now share with the community in the hope they will spark useful discussion among library directors, funders, and administrators regarding strategic library priorities.
The survey finds that a large majority of library directors across the spectrum strongly agree or agree that the potential loss of e-journals is unacceptable, and a significant majority believe their own institution has a responsibility to take action to prevent an intolerable loss of the scholarly record. Most larger libraries responding now support one or more e-journal preservation initiatives; however, the majority of respondents from smaller libraries have yet to support any preservation effort and secure permanent access to e-journals for their institutions. The survey shows that this majority is significantly uncertain about their options for e-journal preservation and how urgent is the need to act.
The survey findings raise a range of important questions about how the responsibility for preservation of critical electronic resources should be supported by the community, even as expenditures on electronic resources grow. For instance, is digital preservation exclusively the domain of larger institutions? Do smaller institutions with now substantial e-journal collections have a role to play? What risks does the community face if action by a majority of libraries from across the spectrum is further deferred?
We hope that this report will be a catalyst for leaders of libraries, consortia, and other organizations to continue the important strategic discussions begun in 2005 about the urgent digital preservation need. Of course this discussion will happen in multiple venues, but to start a conversation we have created a space for readers to share comments, questions and reactions, and we hope that you will offer your perspective.
You may download the report and offer your perspective below.
Regards,
Eileen Fenton
Executive Director, Portico
eileen.fenton@portico.org
This is a very difficult issue, particularly for college, schools and public libraries with very tight budgets. The balancing of process with funding issues must be very high on the agenda. Not much use having digitized sources galore if no one can access them. This is already a significant issue with some newspaper archives online charging full commercial charges.
It is far more than a domestic American issue. All digitall sites draw massively on what is already being done in the US-the world pacemaker in publication and digitizing. It is apparent that the UK is miles behind and Australia is further behind still. The cost of ordinary paperback books is signalling a likely end to books in the longer term and a reliance on online sources. The big issue everyone mentions when that is raised is how to ensure that today’s digital item is still accessible twenty or so years down the road.
What is needed is a world-wide process so that costs can be spread very widely reducing the outlay for individual libraries. It really affects the ‘global south’ institutions many of whom are scratching for the most basic levels of funding.
May I also add that surveying librarians is important in functional terms, as they are the nominal gatekeepers, but arguably the views of academic staff are equally as important. And not just those working full-time but the thousands of us who are retired and dependent on links to access journals,.
My work focusses on the 19C and I regularly read whatever relevant journals I can from the late 19C and early 20C. Add to that the related issue of ebooks and enewspapers etc and the picture grows still greater.
I thoroughly endorse Portico and look forward to the ongoing discussions.
This is a very useful report. Perhaps the current confusion is not surprising; I don’t think many libraries have had Preservation as an explicit budget line in the print era, and where they did it was tiny fractions of one percent.
What can we do? I do think we should continue to encourage different approaches, such as CLOCKSS and LOCKSS as well as Portico. In other words, it is far too early to “simplify the e-journal preservation landscape” down to any one initiative. Portico and CLOCKSS are rather centralised; LOCKSS is (or could be) much more decentralised, particularly if we can get more community involvement in publisher negotiation and plugin development, to support inclusion of the thousands of smaller publishers. These different approaches are valuable.
I would take some encouragement from this extract: ‘44% of this budget-constrained group said that “when our library identifies a top priority, we can make room in the budget for it.” Less than a third disagreed with this statement.’ Typically budgets are highly committed, and there appears no room for manoeuvre, but when high priorities turn up, they get done anyway. The move to the web was one example; no-one had the budget yet everyone has moved.
As a final comment, I would not like your readers to take Dr Welch’s suggestions that the UK and Australia are miles behind in these areas too literally. The truth is that both countries have been leaders in the preservation field, and that current efforts are international in scope.
(Originally posted Jun 6, 2008 at 7:25 am)