Digital Archiving in the Twenty-First Century: Practice at the National Library of the Netherlands

Research journals are increasingly being published digitally. The advantage of digital publishing is obvious: immediate accessibility anywhere. Gradually a disadvantage is also becoming clear: digital publishing endangers the continuity of research information. As a consequence of the obsolescence of formats, hardware, software, and carriers, digital information will be lost unless we act. Digital publishing is also causing a shift in the roles and responsibilities of publishers and libraries concerned with archiving digital publications for future use. Archiving digital publications requires a major turnaround in the policy and practice of national libraries. Although some actions have been taken, digital preservation research and implementation are still in their infancy. National libraries will need substantial funding for venture research activities and development of archival infrastructures. They will also have to work together more closely to successfully organize digital archiving in the twenty-fi rst century. In 1994 the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the national library of the Netherlands, responded to the risk of losing digital information and started to include digital publications in its depository library. For this purpose the KB designed the “Safe Place Strategy,” a strategy ensuring the transfer of digital publications from their publishing environment to a dedicated archiving environment. Through a series of experiments and projects the KB developed skills, procedures, organization, and infrastructure for digital archiving. The digital archive of the KB, the e-Depot, has been fully operational since early 2003. The technical core of the e-Depot is the Digital Information Archiving System (DIAS), a system jointly developed by the KB and IBM. DIAS is the fi rst archiving system available on the LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 54, No. 1, Summer 2005 (“Digital Preservation: Finding Balance,” edited by Deborah Woodyard-Robinson), pp. 33–56 © 2005 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 34 library trends/summer 2005 market that is compliant with the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model standard. Elsevier and several other international scientifi c publishers have entered into a formal archiving relationship with the KB to guarantee future availability of their digital publications. The KB is researching and testing digital preservation methods and solutions that will guarantee permanent access to the archived material. Archiving in the Digital Era The Impact of Digital Publishing In the past decade journal publishing has increasingly turned digital, a change led by publishers in the fi eld of Science, Technology, and Medicine (STM). Generally, all STM publishers now publish their journals digitally with printed derivatives only produced as a secondary format. Without doubt the pioneer of digital publishing is Elsevier (Elsevier, n.d.). Early work on digital publishing began in 1979 with project ADONIS on CDROM and, in 1991, with project TULIP for desktop delivery of e-journals. In 1995 the TULIP project was followed by ScienceDirect OnSite and in 1997 by the Web-based service ScienceDirect. New publishing models are under development, such as SPARC and BioMed Central.1 Even though the fi nal outcome of these experiments is still uncertain (Elsevier, 2004), it is obvious that digital publishing is a success and here to stay. This is evidenced by the increasing number of scientists who use the electronic services offering digital publications. For publishers, digital publishing has shifted the emphasis from the production and selling of publications toward creating and providing enhanced services for searching, linking, and retrieving digital information. Despite the advantages, however, digital publishing poses a serious threat to the continuity of the “Record of Science.” In the past, libraries had assumed the responsibility for archiving the printed journals they bought and collected. Now, with digital resources, libraries do not own the publications but license them from the publishers. Therefore, libraries no longer compile a collection, and the digital publications remain with the publisher. As a consequence the archiving of printed publications implicitly offered by library collections no longer exists for e-journals. Changing Roles Subsequently, archiving needs to be organized explicitly for e-journals. To accomplish this, some institutions have taken the initiative to investigate and develop the archiving of digital publications. There are several signifi cant examples of such initiatives,2 and recently several national programs3 have been set up to encourage the development of digital archiving. Digital publishing not only affects the archiving role of libraries but also the role of publishers. To cover their share of responsibility to maintain the Record of Science, it is no longer suffi cient for publishers to only produce,