Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Saturday, February 24, 2007

Case study in digitizing journal backfiles for OA

Yan Han, Jeanne Pfander, and Marianne Stowell Bracke, Digitizing Rangelands: Providing Open Access to the Archives of Society for Range Management Journals, Quarterly Bulletin of IAALD, 3, 4 (2005) pp. 105-110.  Self-archived February 24, 2007.

The University of Arizona Library is a vital participant in the AgNIC Rangelands project and has contributed to the initiative in many ways. For example, in the mid-to-late 1990’s the Library digitized the backfiles of the Journal of Range Management for open access on the web. Funding and completing digitization projects such as this is a complicated process and requires many decisions along the way. This paper outlines the process taken by the Library to manage a more recent project to scan back issues of the journal Rangelands. It starts with the decision to develop a project plan and request funding from the National Agricultural Library (NAL). It continues on to describe negotiating agreements with project partners, the process for outsourcing of scanning, the design of the technical infrastructure needed to support digitized content, and issues of sustainability that any digital library encounters.