As part of the public responsibility of the national library of The Netherlands to archive publications with a Dutch imprint - general publications as well as scholarly output - the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) has undertaken to develop a digital archive, the national e- Depot. The ‘e-Depot’ system has been devised and implemented to maintain and preserve the delivered content for perpetual access. In addition to items having Dutch imprint, the KB archives international publications in the areas of science, technology and medicine (STM). Because the progress of scholarly knowledge feeds on the scholarship of the past, this is a task of great significance. Agreements have been made with the major international STM publishers, and with this global application of the e-Depot, KB aims to extend its public deposit function for electronic publications to the international level. In so doing, KB intends to become part of a global ‘safe places network’ consisting of a limited number of digital repositories for international electronic publications....
The principles upon which the KB’s strategy is based can be summarised as follows.
Archiving and preservation of digital objects. As scholarly output is moving toward the exclusive use of electronic form, a digital archive is needed for KB to continue fulfilling its deposit task as a national library....
International deposit function. Since the concept of imprint (location of publication) is no longer valid for digital publications, KB extends its national deposit function to the international level. In so doing, KB offers to become part of a global ‘Safe Places Network’, consisting of a number of digital repositories for international electronic publications. Because of the required scale of investment in equipment, skills and expertise, as well as a consequence of publishers’ archiving policies, it is expected that there will be a limited number of such ‘safe places’.
Perpetual access. KB acknowledges research libraries’ concern about the threat of permanent loss of electronic journals and disrupted access to journals for a protracted period following a trigger event, such as a publisher going out of business or a library cancelling a journal subscription (see Section 2.2). An e-Depot would provide a way to manage this threat. Following a trigger event, e-Depot would provide affected libraries with either temporary or permanent access to a specific set of serials and volumes in its archive....
See Chapter 3 on Scholarly dissemination and publishing: a complex and dynamic environment (pp. 15-32), especially 3.3, Trends and uncertainties in scholarly dissemination and publishing (pp. 26-32), covering trends, including the rise of OA, that e-Depot is designed to accommodate.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/14/2007 07:54:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
