Re: a preservation experience

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I wondered when Jan would post his piece of publisher publicity. All
national libraries who are either committed to or will be committed to
archiving the national electronic published output will commit to
migrating to achieve long term access. There is no point in their activity
otherwise. Publishers (it can be assumed) will preserve in the short term,
while the content has commercial value.

In many countries the deposit of national electronic content will be a
legal requirement. For example an act has just been passed in the UK.  
For some reason the Dutch national library (which runs a voluntary system)
has decided that it is appropriate for them to spend the money of their
taxpayers on archiving BMC content long term. I cannot guess what the
reason is unless the company is registered in the Dutch Antilles. They
archive Elsevier and Kluwer also but they are local.

I suspect that in all normal cases, because of the costs involved,
national libraries will only commit to national content - it is because
that is what the funding is for (when they get it). The US situation is
different and more complicated. If I was responsible for a US publisher I
would not know how best to act for the best.

I am writing with some knowledge of the UK situation. The British Library
will I am sure correct me if I have misunderstood the situation from their
viewpoint and wider from the European viewpoint. There is a lot of
fruitful cooperation going on in Europe through the CENL. There will be a
presentation from the British Library on this and related issues at the
upcoming Charleston Conference (November 7th)

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Velterop" <jan@biomedcentral.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 12:33 PM
Subject: RE: a preservation experience

> BioMed Central, the Open Access publisher, shares the view that one cannot
> rely on a single archival solution, certainly not a publisher one. All the
> open access articles we publish are therefore archived in currently four
> repositories, one each in the US, Germany, France and The Netherlands (the
> latter not only archiving current formats, but committing to transposing
> the material to future formats if and when necessary). See here:
> http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/libraries/archive
>
> It goes without saying that the BioMed Central open access articles are
> freely available from these repositories. We are working on expanding the
> number of repositories, in the interest of long-term preservation.
>
> Repositories elsewhere in the world interested in preserving the open
> access BioMed Central material are invited to contact us.
>
> Jan Velterop
> BioMed Central