Launch of the Keepers Registry Beta service

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

*** Apologies for cross-posting ***

EDINA and the ISSN International Centre are pleased to announce 
the Beta release of the Keepers Registry, the e-journals 
preservation registry service. The Keepers Registry is available 
online at http://thekeepers.org.

The Keepers Registry renames and replaces the PEPRS Beta service 
which was launched in April 2011.  The Keepers Registry 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.  The metadata from an 
additional agency, HathiTrust, has been included in this release 
of the Keepers Registry, as well as new functionality to support 
browsing by journal title and publisher.

The PEPRS project 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. Suitable developments 
from the PEPRS project activity will be implemented into the 
Keepers Registry.

The work of the PEPRS project and the launch of the Beta release 
of the Keepers Registry will be discussed at the annual meeting 
of the Directors of the ISSN National Centres to be held in 
Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, from 5th - 7th October 2011.

The idea for the registry was mooted in various reports since 
2003 and the findings of a JISC-commissioned report carried out 
by the University of Loughborough and Rightscom and 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 six archiving agencies which 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
- HathiTrust
- 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 and 2012 and 
details of this are set out in the FAQ section on the service.

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.