[Keepers Extra] Issues and terms: Ingest processes and ‘in progress’

KE-BrandAs we discussed in a previous post, the Keepers Registry team are often asked about the terminology used to report the extent of archiving done by the Keeper agencies. As part of the Keepers Extra project, we are taking time to review our terms and discuss them with users and the Keeper agencies. This post focuses on the term ‘in progress’ as it appears in the Keepers Registry reports.

The Keepers Registry service helps users search for a particular e-journal title in their collection and discover the Keeper agency holdings for that title. The holdings statements can be quite varied, reflecting the various formats in which the data is held by the Keepers and passed to EDINA. While material that has been fully ingested is described as ‘preserved’ and usually listed in volumes or issues, users will frequently come across the term ‘in progress’: this indicates that the Keeper agency listed is the process of acquiring or ingesting the holdings.

In practice the ingest processes of the various Keeper agencies vary considerably and can depend on collection priorities, technological requirements and platforms. A national library operating an electronic legal deposit system, for example, has a quite different approach to an agency that must negotiate with publishers, or a collection policy that is driven by the requirements of member libraries. The speed of ingest can therefore vary significantly.  This means that ‘in progress’ could indicate anything from an agency being in initial negotiations with publishers, to an agency holding data in a raw format, to an almost completely preserved collection.

Unlike the ‘preserved’ reports, ‘in progress’ does not necessarily give a sense of the range of volumes or issues held. Therefore when users compare between agencies and see that parts of a journal are preserved by one agency, and another has the same journal ‘in progress’,  there is no way to see if the material in progress extends the range  preserved or duplicates it. The term indicates only that an agency is making a commitment to hold that title, not the details of contents, nor that it is yet securely held. The question therefore arises of whether this is sufficient information for our users, who may be making decisions about cancellations or withdrawal based on this evidence.

As part of Keepers Extra, over the next year, we will be considering how we might standardise and alter our holdings statements to make them as transparent and as useful as possible.

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