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

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

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
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