PEPRS Beta service now available

[Adam Rusbridge <a.rusbridge@ed.ac.uk>]

EDINA and the ISSN International Centre are pleased to announce 
the Beta release of PEPRS, the e-journals preservation registry 
service. This is the product of JISC-funded project activity, and 
provides freely available means to discover which e-journals are 
being preserved by the leading archival organisations - 
highlighting those e-journals for which no arrangement is on 
record.

The PEPRS Beta service is available at http://www.peprs.org/

We are carrying out a short survey to assess initial user 
reaction to PEPRS and are grateful for all responses: 
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/peprs-beta-service

The ISSN Governing Board met in Paris on Thursday 28th April to 
formally launch the PEPRS Beta service and to confirm its 
wholehearted and continuing support for the PEPRS project and the 
new service.  The Board were very pleased with the work that has 
been done and wished us all success.  Members of the Board will 
be circulating this announcement to colleagues worldwide.  PEPRS 
is expected to have international appeal and anticipated usage 
from both national and university libraries and all parts of the 
serials world.

PEPRS was initially funded as a two-year project to scope, design 
and build a prototype, during which user requirements were 
gathered from librarians and preservation agencies. The present 
funding, until July 2012, is geared towards implementation of a 
service-quality system.

The idea for the registry was mooted in various literature since 
2003 and the findings of a JISC-commissioned report carried out 
by the University of Loughborough and Rightscom were published in 
2008. Further background information on the project and details 
of relevant reports are available on the PEPRS project website at 
http://edina.ac.uk/projects/peprs/index.html

The five archiving agencies that have been participating in the 
project and have made metadata available to the PEPRS Beta 
service include:

- British Library
- CLOCKSS Archive
- e-Depot at the Konjinklijke Bibliotheek
- Global LOCKSS Network
- Portico

It is planned to extend the scope of the service by including 
metadata from other archiving agencies. Additional functionality 
will also be added to the service throughout 2011 - details of 
which are set out in the FAQ section.

A programme to test new functionality is being developed and the 
project team would welcome offers from users to assist in the 
testing process.

If you would like to get involved please contact us at 
edina@ed.ac.uk.

Contact the EDINA HelpDesk at edina@ed.ac.uk
or at

+44 (0)131 650 3302 (telephone)
+44 (0)131 650 3308 (fax)

Causewayside House,
Univesity of Edinburgh
160 Causewayside,
Edinburgh,
Scotland,
United Kingdom
EH9 1PR

EDINA is a UK national academic data centre, designated by JISC 
on behalf of UK funding bodies to support the activity of 
universities, colleges and research institutes in the UK, by 
delivering access to a range of online data services through a UK 
academic infrastructure, as well as supporting knowledge exchange 
and ICT capacity building, nationally and internationally. 
http://edina.ac.uk/about/

The ISSN International Centre, established through agreement 
between UNESCO and the French Government, has the aim of 
introducing and operating an automated system for the 
registration of serials and maintains the ISSN Register. The ISSN 
(International Standard Serial Number) is an eight-digit number 
which identifies periodical publications, including electronic 
serials.  http://www.issn.org/