Publishers support voluntary scheme to save electronic publications for the future
24/03/2002
Over 100 publishers have signed up to a voluntary scheme for the deposit of electronic publications, the British Library announced in a press release. More than 800 monographs and 850 journals (or over 13,000 separate issues) have been archived for the future as a result of the scheme.
Set up in January 2000, the voluntary code of practice between the publishing industry and the six legal deposit libraries aims to ensure that electronic publications are preserved, and their content made accessible for the long-term.
Since that date non-print publications in microform (eg microfilm) and offline electronic media (i.e. electronic publications issued on physically separate digital media, such as CD-ROMs, DVDs and magnetic disks) have been added to the national published archive. Publishers have also been encouraged to deposit publications in these media published before the end of 1999.
The need for legislation to ensure that UK non-print publications are included in the national archive has been recognised by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Before the introduction of legislation the Department asked the legal deposit libraries and publishing industry bodies to agree and implement a voluntary scheme to ensure that material was not lost.
Clive Field, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the Library comments, ‘The voluntary scheme has given us the opportunity to work with publishers in identifying some of the challenges in the practical implementation of future legislation. Whilst continuing to press for legislation, we are now starting to discuss voluntary deposit and archiving of online publications with publishers, and working to address the difficult technical issues in preserving these for the future.’
Clive Field continues, ‘Long-term access to digital materials can only be assured by planned and systematic archiving, capable of ensuring that content is transferable from one generation of technology to the next. The Library’s Digital Library System will help ensure that these materials will still be retrievable when the formats in which they originated are long dead.’
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