Ensuring Continuity of Access To Our Published Heritage

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinez/5000985919/

Peter Burnhill, EDINA@ University of Edinburgh

Preserving Streams of Issued Content

1. Scottish Education Data Archive, 1979 - mid ‘80s– Survey statistician: school leavers, YTS & 16-19 cohort surveys

• In Centre for Educational Sociology

2. Edinburgh University Data Library,1984 & on– Manager: set-up and development– President of IASSIST, 2000 – 2004 : social science data professionals

3. Graduate School, Faculty of Social Science, 1987 – 1997– Senior Lecturer, teaching quantitative/survey methods

• In Research Centre for Social Sciences

4. ESRC Regional Research Laboratory for Scotland, 1986/90– Co-director: early days of Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

• With University’s Department of Geography

5. EDINA, 1995/6 to present - main focus as day job– Director: set-up and continuous development– Jisc-designated centre for service delivery & digital expertise

6. Digital Curation Centre, 2004/05– Director for set-up & definition of ‘data curation + digital preservation’

• With University’s School of Informatics

‘Data person’: now with focus on scholarly record

3-Part Talk

1. What EDINA Does– University of Edinburgh & Jisc– Celebrating 20 years of online services

2. Adapting to Digital Realities– Challenges to the integrity & continuity of

the scholarly and cultural record

3. What Needs to Happen: what you can do!– Leadership for national actions within the

international context of scholarship

Part 1: What EDINA Does

Helps fulfil the mission of the University of Edinburgh• EDINA & Data Library Division, in Information Services Group

– As Director, I report to: Chief Information Officer & Librarian to University

** My duty to say something about Jisc and the University **

1983: Early beginnings as Data Library for Universityjoined IASSISTdata.org

1995, University won open competition as UK datacentre

25 January 2016 marks the 20th Anniversary of launch as EDINA with a Burns Night Supper

develops & delivers online services for research & education in the UK, and beyond

• 85+ staff (inc. librarians, GIS specialists & 35 software engineers)• About 2/3rds of funding for EDINA as a Jisc-designated UK centre

for digital expertise and service delivery

Once JISC, part of the UK Funding Councils for Higher Education, Jisc is now a share services organisation, a charity owned by

Universities UK, the Association of Colleges and Guild HE

Jisc.ac.uk

Ranked 17th= in the World by QS World University Rankings 2014-15

Over 1,000 international research collaborations

Our scientists: created Dolly the Sheep developed the first genetically engineered

hepatitis B vaccine pioneered the first automated industrial

assembly robot devised technology used in today's

smartphones discovered how particles acquire their mass

(Higgs boson)

Associated with 16 Nobel Prize winners - in areas such as Physics, Medicine, Economics

The University: History & Prestige

The Edinburgh Experience

World’s first UNESCO City of Literature World Heritage Site

Founded in 1583, as the first ‘civic’ university, in UK, and perhaps in the world

The Library was started in 1580

it is older than the University

ed.ac.uk

MoU's with FAPESP, University of Sao Paulo, University Federal de San Carlos, UFRGS and UNIFESP . The University has Latin America office is in Santiago, Chile

edina.ac.uk

Innovation into Service

Many available ‘openly’ for international use:

• National Union Catalogue• Keepers Registry • Open Access Depot• Research Data Management

• MANTRA

Others ‘restricted’ for use only by staff & students in UK universities & colleges:

• Digimap geospatial data• Access Management

Special focus here on • Keepers Registry • Hiberlink: Reference Rot• SafeNet: Post-Cancelation

Access

Part 2: Adapting to Digital Realities

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinez/5000985919/

Key Message:• What is digital and online

(somewhere) is at risk of loss

what was once available in print ,

on-shelf locally …

… is now online & accessed remotely,

‘anytime/anywhere’

But what of Continuity of Access?

Ease of Access is so much better

Digital back copy is not in the custody of libraries

Picture credit: http://somanybooksblog.com/2009/03/27/library-tour/

Libraries boast of ‘e-collections’, but do they only have ‘e-connections’?

If not custodians, then only customers?

More Bad News: ‘The Digital Realities’

Risks inherent in digital media & formats:• Lacks ‘fixity’ – it can be change from what it was!• ‘digital decay’: format obsolescence & bit rot

And single points of failure: • natural disasters (earthquake, fire and flood)• human folly (criminal and political action): hacking

+ risks associated with commercial events in the publisher/supply chain

Web Today, Gone Tomorrow!<References to what is on the Web rots over time: hiberlink.org >

Language Technology GroupFunded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

‘Reference Rot’ When what was referenced & cited ceases to say the same thing, or ‘has ceased to be’

http://www.snorgtees.com/this-parrot-has-ceased-to-be

Reference Rot = Link Rot + Content Drift

“when links to web resources no longer point to what they once did”

Breaking News: Yet Another Threat (& some Remedy)

‘The (published) Scholarly Record’

‘e-journals’

Websites, Databases, Repositories

‘Book-length work’

‘Gov Docs’

Focus now on what is published and that content that is issued online as a ‘continuing resource’

Conference proceedings

‘e-magazines’

‘e-newsmedia’

Online Continuing ResourcesISSN

‘Our published heritage’

‘resources needed for scholarship’ Issued in Parts

(Serials)Content changes over time

(Integrating)

‘e-journals’

Websites, Databases, Repositories

‘Book-length work’

‘Gov Docs’

Identifying what is published and issued online as a ‘continuing resource’

Conference proceedings

‘e-magazines’

‘e-newsmedia’

Some Good News: digital shelving is available

① Web-scale not-for-profit archiving agencies:

② National libraries …

③ Research libraries: consortia & specialist centres …

National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences

National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Different models

Organisations that ingest content with archival intent …

Many archiving organisations a Good Thing

“Digital information is best preserved by replicating it at multiple archives run by autonomous organizations”

B. Cooper and H. Garcia-Molina (2002)

Bad stuff will happen!

Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe (LOCKSS)

But how do we know who is keeping what?

ISSN Register

E-J Preservation Registry Service

E-Journal Preservation

Registry

(a)

(b)Data dependency

ISSN-L as kernel field

METADATAon extant e-journals

METADATA on preservation action

ISSN Register at the heart of the Data Model(Taken from Figure 1 in reference paper in Serials, March 2009)

Digital Preservation Agencies

e.g. CLOCKSS, Portico; BL, KB; UK LOCKSS Alliance etc.

Project

thekeepers.org

… to discover who is looking after what

thekeepers.org

What’s the (scale of the) Present Danger?

The Keepers Registry reports titles ‘ingested & archived’ by at least 1 ‘keeper’:

16,558 In 2011,

21,557 in 2013

27,463 as at May 2015

9,785 'ingested & archived' by 3 or more

More archives reporting into Registry & more archiving!

ISSN assigned for ‘e’ 35,000 in 2009

100,000 in 2012

160,000 in 2015

Two Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

‘Ingest Ratio’ = titles ingested by one or more Keeper / ‘online serials’ in ISSN Register

= 28,103 / 165,949 [as of June 2015]

=> 17%‘KeepSafe Ratio’ = titles being ingested by 3+

Keepers / ‘online serials’ in ISSN Register

= 9,836 / 165,949

=> 6%

Bad News: Most of what libraries care about may be missing …

Using Title List Comparison tool in Members Area of Keepers Registry

As reported in: P. Burnhill (2013) Tales from The Keepers Registry: Serial Issues About Archiving & the Web. Serials Review 39 (1), 3–20. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098791313000178, &https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/6682

In 2011/12 three major research libraries in the USA (Columbia, Cornell & Duke)

checked archival status of serial titles regarded as important against the Keepers Registry

‘Ingest Ratio’ = 22% to 28%, ie about a quarter

=> fate of c.75% is unknown

Evidence from the USA

… logs for the UK OpenURL Router*• 8.5m full text requests in UK during 2012

=> 53,311 online titles requested Analysis in 2013::

‘Ingest Ratio’ = 32% (16,985/53,311)

=> over two thirds 68% (36,326 titles) held by none!

Not much better for what Researchers Use

* As reported in Keepers Registry Blog, OpenURL Router passes ‘discovery’ requests to commercial OpenURL resolver services; developed & delivered by EDINA as part of Jisc support for UK universities & colleges

Evidence from the UK

3. What needs to happen

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinez/5000985919/

Key Message:• Act now to take responsibility

for archiving digital streams of Issued Content

US: 20%Sp: 5%

Researchers (& libraries/publishers) in any one country are dependent upon content written and published as serials in

countries other than their own

Canada 5%UK: 9%

Brazil: 5%

Ger: 5%

India: 3%

Using the ISSN to identify serial content

%age of 132,806 ISSN assigned for e-serials (December 2013)* now 160,000 *

Known Archival Status of Online Continuing Resources assigned ISSN, by Country, June 2015

Elsevier

Springer

->

very many ‘at risk’ e-journals from many (small & not so small) publishers

BIG publishers

act early but incompletely

Priority: find economic way to archive content from

Known Archival Status of Online Continuing Resources published in Brazil (ISSN), June 2015

->

Perhaps more is being kept safe?

& IBICT has project to archive all open access scientific e-journals, see http://oasisbr.ibict.br

[+ Cariniana implementing a LOCKSS Network: 1023 subscribed titles]

Cariniana & IBICT are planning to tell the Keepers Registry!

• Upload list of ISSN & titles• Receive back report on what is

being archived & what is not

Register now for Member Services:

http://thekeepers.org

New Service: [just launched last week]

Title List Comparison

You can use the Keepers Registry to check the archival status of the journals that are of key importance to you

Imagine Sinpred 2020

• Best Case scenario– Publishers (& Libraries) have acted– ‘Adapting to Digital Realities’– Together with the Keepers they have ensured

that all the e-journal content used by researchers this year (in 2015) has been preserved and can be used successfully in 2020

Imagine Sinpred 2020

• Best Case– Publishers (& Libraries) have acted– They have ensured that all the e-journal content

used by researchers this year (in 2015) has been preserved and can be used successfully in 2020

• Worst Case scenario– Publishers (& Libraries) failed to act sufficiently!– ‘Not Adapting to Digital Realities’– Important literature has been lost– Citizens & scholars (rightly) complain of neglect

“the values [academic libraries] hold are of immense importance to a world in which …• knowledge has been transformed into intellectual property, • the Web has been turned into a shopping platform, and • social interaction online is used to collect and monetize our

lives […].

As the invisible infrastructure of our technological future is taking shape, society needs library values more than ever.”

(Fister, 2015)

Whose responsibility to archive content? Do we leave it to the publishers?What then is a library?

Should each research library act on its own?Benefit of acting as consortia of research libraries

What is the role of national/state libraries?More than a national, it is a trans-national challenge!

Ensuring access to digital back copy:

• What should be done? Accept responsibility for stewardship of collections

1. Use the Keepers Registry

2. Commit financial support for web-scale agencies,

• such as CLOCKSS: invest 1%

3. Contribute your collection development expertise

** use the Title List Comparison Tool in the Keepers Registry **

4. Tell publishers, archiving agencies & national library to commit to

archive their content with a Keeper

5. Consider options for collaborative action

• By associations of research & university libraries [Cariniana]

• With National Library of Brazil? Another ?

6. Avoid the 2020 Vision where you get the blame! What can I do?

Thank You / Obrigado!

edina@ed.ac.uk

‘Take The Long View’ 7th September 2015

Edinburgh

thekeepers.org