Reflections on the semester

I feel that I learned so much this semester. I wish I could look back at the pre-quiz we took on the first day, because I really knew nothing about electronic resources at the beginning of the semester.

It was so interesting and inspiring to learn how much librarians have taken upon themselves in this field. The entire spectrum of skills needed to manage electronic resources includes knowledge about copyrights and licensing, creating ERMS, developing and understanding standards, wrangling the linkage and searching issues, and keeping track of all the various and interrelated players. In addition, librarians not only manage the intricacies of ER, but also remain vigilant in ensuring that commercial publishers and aggregators don't call all the shots. In this age of intellectual property, publishers of digital content do their best to make it easy to follow their ownership model--for example, Apple and iTunes. Nothing is easier than getting all your music within the closed system of the iPod/iTune. Just a little click does it, which leads to consumer complacency. The same concept applies to scholarly information. Giant aggregators and publishing monopolies make it so much easier just to buy everything from them, and have it all fall into place at the click of a button, It is more convenient to purchase documents on a pay-per-view basis instead of negotiating licenses that allow interlibrary loans. It is safer to purchase copyright permission instead of risking infringement suits. It is less time-consuming to purchase all of the libraries information systems from one source than it is to work together to ensure interoperability by standards.

Electronic resources are at the heart of academic librarianship, and I think anyone who works in an academic library or uses an academic library is affected by the issues that surround electronic resources. Rising subscription costs, bundling of journals, technology monopolies, the loss of smaller independent publishers, restrictions on interlibrary loan and fair use, and erosion of the first sale doctrine are threats to academic scholarship and research, and are detrimental to the social good that copyright law was originally meant to protect. Just because it is easier to pay for privileges than it is to stand up for rights, doesn't mean we should give them up. The unique role of facilitating information exchange between commercial digital publishers and the public puts the electronic resource librarian in a key position to affect the future of digital rights.

Unit 14: Perpetual Access

This unit deals with two unfortunate facts using electronic journal subscriptions and digital information to fill library collections. First, the material is not owned by libraries, so libraries may not continue to have access to material they subscribed to in the past. Second, information stored in digital form can be difficult to preserve. Digital archiving is faced with problems of breakdown and obsolescence of storage media. In addition, some forms of digital information can be very difficult to archive. This includes large multi-faceted objects, e.g. databases, and digital communications, such as blogs.

The Watson chapter in this week's readings observed that many libraries do not make selections based on whether perpetual access will be part of the licensed rights to the material, or inclusion of a print counterpart. Patrons are not as interested in problems of preservation as they are in electronic access to current content. Tight budgets may dictate giving up print+electronic resources in favor of electronic-only resources, if that is less expensive. The chapter gave the example of choosing to subscribe from an aggregator for budgetary reasons, even though aggregators often do not offer perpetual access. Because libraries are under pressure from patron needs and budgets that can interfere with their mission of preservation, third parties are stepping in to fill the gap. Here are some of the organizations that are working to preserve digital information and heritage:

• JSTOR: On its website, JSTOR describes itself as a "not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers and students discover use and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive of over one thousand academic journals and other scholarly content." Libraries subscribe to archived collections held in JSTOR.
• LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe): LOCKSS is an open source software that libraries can use to store content from publishers. Permission needs to be written into the license by the publisher before the library can deposit content. The LOCKSS software crawls the publisher site to pull in content. Libraries have perpetual access to content, and the presence of multiple copies helps with preservation.
  
• Portico: A centralized storage service. Participating libraries and publishers pay a fee to deposit content. Access terms are vague. Is better as a preservation model than a perptual access model
  
• Google Book Search: Massive digitization project through Google. Preservation librarians do not necessarily feel that relying on Google Books is good preservation practice, because G-digitized books have been seen to have digitization errors. Also, Google is a for-profit company which may have long-term drawbacks for preservation issues.
• PubMed Central (PMC): From its website, PMC is "The U.S. National Institutes of Health free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Archives content from some online journals and provides it free of change
  

The Stemper & Barribeau article talked about the difference between perpetual access rights and archiving rights. Perpetual access means that you can continue to access a copy of the item, but not necessarily make and store your own copy. Archiving rights allow you to make your own copy.
The article spends time talking about the difference between Portico and LOCKSS, which I am still a little unclear on. Both provide the means to archive material, and both are founded by the Mellon Foundation. LOCKSS is a distributed system, while Portico is a centralized system. Libraries can use either. LOCKSS has looser control, and is less expensive. Publishers and libraries must pay annual fee to deposit into Portico. Portico restricts access to material, unless there is a trigger event, such as a natural disaster. I guess I would say that LOCKSS represents perpetual access/archiving, while Portico is archiving/conditional access.
Through surveys, the authors found that the majority of libraries do ask for perpetual access, but are willing to subscribe without it. The goal of the paper was to find out how many licenses included clauses for perpetual access. The UW-Madison and University of Minnesota have a policy of asking for perpetual access if it is not included in the license. (Note--just these two? Why does the study mention UW-Madison, when it used data from U of Minnesota?) The study of licenses signed by University of Minnesota. It found that the majority of publishers will offer perpetual access, and commercial publishers are more likely than scholarly publishers to offer it.


The lessons that I take from the readings are that librarians that work with electronic resources should be aware of access and preservation issues, and what the difference is between access and preservation. Publishers are not naturally interested in either, unless there are dollar signs or useful services attached. It falls to libraries to push for perpetual access to subscribed material, putting pressure on publishers to provide it. Third party programs like LOCKSS are good way to combine issues of preservation and perpetual access, while programs like Portico are a good way to lure publishers into depositing their material for archival, by providing a backup to their material and a secure location to keep it in.


References:
Jennifer Watson (2008) “Preservation Concerns in the E-Resources Environment” in Maria D.D. Collins and Patrick L. Carr (Eds) Managing the Transition from Print to Electronic Journals and Resources. New York: Routledge, pp 45-63.
2. Library of Congress Speaker Series: Eileen Fenton “Portico: An Electronic Archiving Service” 45 minute video http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=3863
3. Stemper, J. & Barribeau, S. (2006). “Perpetual Access to Electronic Journals: A Survey of One Academic Research Library‟s Licenses.” Library Resources & Technical Services, 50(2), 91-109.
4. Seadle, Michael1 (2006). “A Social Model for Archiving Digital Serials: LOCKSS.” Serials Review, 32(2), 73-77.