Peter Burnhill
Director
University of Edinburgh
Gaëlle Béquet
Director
ISSN International Centre
Theron ‘Ted’ Westervelt
Section Head
Library of Congress
Alan Darnell
Director, Scholars Portal
University of Toronto
As today’s researchers and students benefit from ever-greater ease of access, research libraries seemingly have ceased to be the custodians of content, their supposed e-collections now mere e-connections. Assured and continued access to the scholarly record surely remains an essential task, and if research libraries do not collect and keep each country’s published heritage, who else will do so? This session has three perspectives. First, data from the Keepers Registry is used to report how archiving organizations now provide digital shelving for the streams of content issued online. Recent publication of a NASIG 2015 Vision Address by Anne Kenney, ‘Building a Social Compact for Preserving E-Journals,’ provides background context. A second perspective is required for the challenges, which the Registry helps highlight, most notably the long tail of serial content that must be presumed to be most at risk. This long tail includes works that are ‘scholarly,’ applied in character (and therefore often in a local language other than English) and a growing body of open access content (both open access journals and Gold/article processing charges articles), as well as other material needed for scholarship but beyond the academy walls. Finally the focus is on the concerted action that is required, nationally and internationally, in order to close the gap between what is being published and what is being archived. Those challenges, noted by Kenney who calls for “e-journal archiving programs [to] form a network of mutual support and interdependence,” are the subject of the third perspective in the session. Coincidentally, the Registry’s Keepers gathered in Edinburgh (2015) and Paris (2016), issuing an agreed statement on Working Together to Ensure the Future of the Digital Scholarly Record. In this and in the Kenny address there is a direct call to research libraries to act in order to fulfill their various and collective missions. It will be interesting to see how the newly formed International Alliance of Research Library Associations (IARLA) could provide some transnational leadership.
http://thekeepers.blogs.edina.ac.uk/keepers-extra/ensuringthefuture/
http://thekeepers.org
https://thekeepers.org/agencies
http://www.scholarsportal.info/
http://www.copyright.gov/cad/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2016.1141630
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03H376Npm0w
Presentation (Burnhill)