Re: Libraries and archiving (Re: If electronic is to replace paper)

[Ted Freeman <tfreeman@allenpress.com>]

Sorry if I have oversimplified in saying that "archiving" is easy. I guess
my assumption, perhaps a naive one, has been that libraries do have the
resources to store electronic files in some intelligible way for retrieval
(e.g., flat file structure), which is my idea of "archiving" on the
simplest level. Some of the electronic publishing licensing agreements I
have seen, to satisfy the permanent access requirement, promise to deliver
data files (not delivery systems) to libraries for "archiving," by which
is usually meant backup copies of thousands of HTML or SGML or PDF files.
My point has been that for the libraries to integrate and deliver these
files to the public with a system that includes internal and external
linking, sophisticated searching, etc., would be enormously difficult and
very expensive.

Ted Freeman

________________

At 10:53 AM 11/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Donna Packer sends the following message:
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Donna Packer <Donna.Packer@wwu.edu>
>To: "liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
>Subject: R: Libraries and archiving (Re: If electronic is to replace paper)
>Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 08:48:02 -0800
>
>It's not so easy for smaller and even medium-size libraries to find the
>computing resources and personnel to engage in this "easy" archiving.  
>
>
>Donna Packer
>Librarian for the College of Business and Economics
>Western Washington University Libraries
>Bellingham, WA 98225
>E-Mail donna.packer@wwu.edu
>Telephone 360.650.3335
>Fax 360.650.3044
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ted Freeman [mailto:tfreeman@allenpress.com]
>Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 4:33 PM
>To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>Subject: Re: Libraries and archiving (Re: RE: If electronic is to
>replace paper)
>
>I agree with Mr. Meyer about libraries acting as useful archives for
>thousands of online journals. The reality is that libraries can "archive"
>or store data in various formats currently being used by publishers to
>deliver journals, such as PDF, HTML, SGML/XML, Postscript, TeX, plain
>ASCII text, etc. (some of which, as Meyer points out, will cease to be
>usable over time). But can they afford and do they have the expertise to
>build, maintain and refresh the systems to integrate and deliver all of
>this data effectively to their patrons, particularly given the variety of
>SGML/XML DTDs and searching and linking algorithms involved in the
>publishers' delivery systems? "Getting the content out to market in a
>reasonably durable format," as an earlier arguer put it, is still what the
>publishers are doing when they build elaborate full-text journal web sites
>using an SGML database. As it happens, they're also building in some cases
>impressive archives and universal access points at the same time,
>something only libraries were able to do effectively in the world of
>print. But publishers are not going to give libraries the proprietary
>source code driving these sites that has cost them in some cases hundreds
>of thousands if not millions of dollars to create, and which would be
>difficult to assimilate and to integrate by a third party in any case.
>
>Ted Freeman
>--------------