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As we reach the first birthday of the Keepers Registry, it’s worth reviewing how the service has developed to date and how it will develop in future.
Developments over the past year
EDINA and the ISSN International Centre launched the Keepers Registry beta service a year ago, on the 4th October 2011.
Our primary focus over the year has been on currency and completeness of the archiving agency metadata.
Some of the participating preservation agencies had previously made available metadata on the holdings of the archive; there were variations, however, in structure and depth of reporting. In the Keepers Registry, we attempt to report at volume-level, though some had only explored to title-level. Others had never issued publicly available coverage statements.
We’re pleased to report that all participating agencies have now supplied us with complete holdings information. The success of the Keepers Registry is tightly coupled to the individual contribution of each archiving agency in providing holdings’ information. We would like to acknowledge these contributions and thank each agency for their efforts in making available this information, and for their support.
We can note the following highlights from the past year:
Data from Archiving Agencies
- Added NSLC data
- Added complete volume information for e-Depot data
- Added complete volume information for CLOCKSS Archive data
- Added complete volume information for Global LOCKSS Network data
- Made available statistics on the coverage extent archived by archiving agencies in the Keepers Registry
New Agencies
- Released our draft “Criteria for Inclusion”
- Negotiated the participation of two further agencies (who are in the process of exporting holdings information)
Data Format
- Undertaken trial exchanges using the ONIX for Preservation Holdings format
Comparison with local holdings
- Formalised requirements
- Developed initial scripts to support comparisons
- Undertaken a trial comparison
Developments scheduled for the year ahead
Developments planned for the future can be found on our Development Roadmap.
Our first priority is to release functionality to compare Keepers Registry information with local library subscription holdings. After uploading a list of Titles and ISSNs, a report will be generated to list the known preservation action for each ISSN.
While all archiving agencies have made great progress by making available holdings information, we would like to further encourage clarity and automation by broadening adoption of machine-readable format standards such as ONIX-PH.
The public response to the Keepers Registry service has been uniformly positive, and the Keepers Registry has received strong endorsement from the JISC’s e-Journal Archiving Implementation Group.
The current project funding completes at the end of September 2012, and EDINA is currently in discussion with JISC regarding further funding. The Keepers Registry remains a Beta service and we plan to become a fully operational service as we refine our processes and agree common workflows with participating agencies. As part of this process we will be establishing a Board of Governance with international representation.
We welcome comments and suggestions, and enjoy hearing about how you are using the Keepers Registry beta service in your organisation. Please get in touch at edina@ed.ac.uk.
