Preview our new service features

We are pleased to make available a preview of the next major service release of the Keepers Registry at http://preview.thekeepers.org

The current service (http://thekeepers.org) will continue as the primary service during May but we would encourage you to try out the preview version.  The preview will be released into service in June 2015. In the meantime, we are grateful for feedback on the preview version to edina@ed.ac.uk.

New Features

Our new Member Services area provides access to our added-value features.  Once you’re registered for our new Member Services area you will find:

  • Our Title List Comparison service, enabling a user to discover the archival status for a list of serials:  identifying those that are being preserved and those that are “at risk”.
  • The first version of our SRU and Z39.50machine-to-machine interfaces.  This will be of value to other service providers who may wish to report Keepers Registry information in their interface.
  • Persistent URLsto support bookmarking and sharing of specific records.

We anticipate that the Title List Comparison service will be of great assistance to library staff, as it allows you to upload a list of titles identified by ISSN and receive a report containing the data uploaded plus information on “who is preserving what” and what is not being preserved.

Access to our Member Services is free. To learn more about the our features and try out a Title List Comparison of your own, please register now.

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[Keepers Extra] Title List Comparison Tool Ready for Testing

KE-BrandTo accompany development of a new release of the Keepers Registry, we have been conducting a number of consultation exercises to gather feedback from our users. One of the key points that emerged from these interviews is that use of the Keepers Registry has been incidental rather than systematic. Librarians and archivists have turned to Keepers Registry when they have needed to investigate the archival status of a single title or publisher, or when they have had a one-off task to complete, such as checking the preservation of numerous titles as part of a project to analyse collections and make decisions about withdrawals. While the filters we currently have allow them to do this, having to work at the level of single title or publisher makes the registry less practical for regular, large-scale analysis.

TLCTwo of the tools that we are currently working on are designed to address this issue. Our member services area, now undergoing final testing before public release, features two services designed to enable users to work with collection lists and larger scale holdings data. A title list comparison tool allows users to upload a list of titles with ISSNs and get a tailored report of the preservation status of the collection.

We have been trialling an early version of this since last summer and with some more development work completed recently, including an improved registration process, we are about to begin user testing with a view to launching the tool later this spring. Once registered, users can find guidance on preparing their data and case studies of how such data can be used. Librarians can upload lists generated from their library catalogue and then receive a report identifying how many of those titles have been preserved. As part of the Keepers Extra project we’ve started looking at how to return this information via a more manageable online interface, adding useful filters and more intuitive data visualisations.

Also forthcoming is an API that will allow data from the Keepers Registry to be integrated with other services used by libraries. This will be released at the same time as the Title List Comparison feature, and we’re looking forward to working with service providers to see how this data can be integrated more directly into library workflows.
If you would be interested in testing the title list comparison tool or have feedback that you’d like to share, please get in touch.

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[Keepers Extra] Issues and terms: archived or preserved?

KE-BrandOne of the recurrent discussions around the Keepers Registry is about language: we are regularly asked about the terms used in the holdings statements and precisely what they indicate.  In fact, as this post explains, this is not merely a question of clarity and precision but rather of systems, resources and assumptions:  we need vocabulary which is both apt and consistent, but which must also accommodate the variations in processes and practices used by the archiving agencies. With Keepers Extra, we now have some time and space to think through these issues, which remain unresolved for the moment. This post, the first of a series focused on issues around the registry, discusses our current use of the term ‘preserved’.

In reporting the current extent of archiving, the Keepers Registry lists the titles and volumes that are held by the Keeper agencies as either ‘preserved’ or ‘in progress’. As we currently use these terms, ‘preserved’ means simply that the content has been ingested and ‘in progress’ indicates that a Keeper is either in discussion with a publisher about that content or in the process of setting up the infrastructure and workflows required for ingest. This means that in practice these terms can actually indicate content in different formats and at various stages of different ingest processes. As a result, users would need to do further research with the Keeper holding a title if they wanted to establish details such as file formats or the exact volumes and issues held for a title ‘in progress.’

The term ‘preserved’, moreover, has certain implications that may or may not be helpful. Some approaches transfer digital content upon ingest into specific data models and file formats for long-term preservation, others focus on collecting the bits and defer migration to the on-demand point in time when that effort is needed. There are approaches that front-load the costs of curation, but also those that utilise minimal treatment, focusing current resources on preserving greater quantities of content.

The Keepers Registry remains neutral on this debate.  We currently aggregate data from ten quite different archiving agencies, with different ingest methods. The Keepers Registry is valued for reporting on the activity of these agencies,  and it is important that the Keepers Registry does not favour one method over another. Our Keepers range from globally active preservation services to smaller discipline specific archives, and include a number of national libraries and University Library-led consortia services. Each operates with a distinctive mission and business model, different infrastructure, processes, and resources.  The forms in which we receive data are therefore varied, as are the formats in which the different Keepers store their content. At the outset, we deemed ‘preserved’ to be general enough to cover all of the different modes in which the Keepers hold their collections. However, we have had some discussions that highlighted it as a contentious phrase and have been considering the alternative phrase ‘archived’ instead.

The Keepers Extra project will allow us to consider language with users and reporting Keeper agencies. We can look at the merits of ‘preserved’ and ‘archived’. We will also be looking at other language requirements, for example around clarity of access conditions. Our intention is to convey  rich information appropriate to all our users’ needs and we will be considering this over the coming months as we consult further with librarians, archivists and researchers.

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Survey of UK HE Institutions

SafeNet is a Jisc project to develop the foundations of national archive infrastructure to host a UK collection of archived e-journals and clarify continuing access rights through use of an entitlement registry that will record subscription history. The intention is to simplify the route to articles when a current subscription is no longer in place and access via the publisher’s platform is either unavailable or unaffordable.

In January 2015, Jisc Collections carried out a survey of its membership in order to understand the post-cancellation access needs of the UK HE community.  We are now making available the results of that survey.  37 people representing 35 institutions – approximately 25% of UK higher education institutions – completed an online questionnaire which was sent out on three mailing lists aimed at librarians. The detailed free text responses given to many of the questions will take longer to analyse, so a preliminary report is designed to give early indicative feedback to the community.

The responses highlight the concern that access to journal content could be lost when subscriptions are cancelled, with 89% of respondents saying that they were ‘quite concerned’ or ‘very concerned’:

safenet_concern

When asked ‘How useful would a UK managed post-cancellation access solution, consisting of an archive of journal content and a registry of entitlement information, be to your library?’ 36 (97%) or respondents replied ‘quite useful’ or ‘very useful’. This gives Jisc a clear mandate to continue pursuing the project and discussing terms of participation with publishers.

safenet_useful

Next steps

The project aims to deliver a working service by July 2016. We will continue to consult with the library community as the project develops – EDINA have conducted follow up interviews with a number of UK institutions which will form the basis of use cases, and these will feature in a future blog post. Feel free to contact the project team if you have any further questions.

The full report is available for download.

[Keepers Extra] Why a Keepers Extra project?

KE-BrandJisc have invested in Keepers Extra, a 2-year project to optimize the benefit of the Keepers Registry service to UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and other key stakeholders. Led by EDINA, Keepers Extra builds on the success of the Keepers Registry service, which provides easily accessible information about the archiving arrangements for electronic journals. 

We will be adding posts to this blog that discuss the Keepers Extra project, update the Keepers Registry community on progress, and discuss the themes raised in the project.  In this first introductory post, we consider the need and rationale for the Keepers Extra project.

The last decade has seen an explosive growth in on-line scholarly publishing. Rather than reading journals onsite at the library, researchers and students alike expect to access and consult papers and articles quickly and easily from their own computers. University libraries increasingly provide access to material hosted by publishers, paying subscriptions for access to journals on-line rather than for printed back copies. These changes have had significant ramifications for libraries in terms of how their spaces and collections are used, fundamentally changing the priorities and collection management policies of some institutions. The rapid transformation to an electronic environment has had many benefits including faster and more flexible access to journal articles. However, it has also given rise to significant issues surrounding the longer term accessibility of scholarly material and these new e-journal publishing and subscription practices have implications on the library’s traditional role of stewardship. The consequences of these changes are not yet clear, but they raise many questions: when libraries pay for access rather than for an object, what happens when that access is halted? How does a researcher consult a ‘back copy’ when their library no longer subscribes? What happens when a title is transferred between publishers or when a publisher goes out of business? Publishers have not historically taken that role of stewardship and if libraries are no longer the collectors and custodians of the scholarly record, who is responsible for ensuring that the world’s knowledge is preserved for the future?

In 2011, analysis undertaken by the Keepers Registry team showed that of all the continuing resources assigned ISSNs, only around 20% was safely archived. That means that an astonishing 80% of contemporary scholarship published in e-journals is at risk of loss.

Launched in 2011 in partnership between EDINA and the ISSN International Centre, the Keepers Registry was designed to enable its users to see what scholarly e-journal content has been preserved, by whom and under what terms of access. The Keepers Registry aggregates metadata from participating archiving agencies and, using the ISSN-L as a unique identifier for journal titles, it serves as a showcase for the work of the Keepers, the archiving agencies undertaking the vitally important task of ensuring that the scholarly record is preserved for future generations. These include national libraries, research library consortia and not-for-profit initiatives such as Portico and CLOCKSS. In addition to revealing precisely which journals and volumes are safely stored, the Registry is helping us to understand what is not being archived.  By analysing the extent of archiving by usage, or by country of publication, we can begin to understand the extent of publications that remain at risk of loss.

Keepers Registry is becoming established as an important tool in library workflows, but the challenge of increasing preservation coverage remains, hence the need for Keepers Extra.

Keepers Extra is a community-driven project designed to build on the Registry and explore the challenges that it brings into focus. As well as enabling feature developments that will ensure the service is maximally useful to the library community and Keeper agencies, it will encourage new archiving agencies to join the Keepers community and lay the foundations for collaboration among key stakeholders both nationally and internationally. Strategically, Keepers Extra lets us explore how as a community we might work together to increase the preservation coverage of scholarly e-journals.

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UKLA Roundup: May 2014

The May 2014 roundup from the UK LOCKSS Alliance support service is now available. In this roundup we highlight availability of UKLA membership pricing for 2014 – 2015, news about LOCKSS software and content, and report on Vicky Reich and David Rosenthal winning the LITA/Hi Tech Award for outstanding communications in library and information technology.

If you’d like to join future calls, or if you have comments, queries, or suggestions for future content please contact edina@ed.ac.uk.

 

Announcing New Member Services From The Keepers Registry

We have been working on a new release of the Keepers Registry. This includes a range of new Member Services such as a Title List Comparison facility and Linking Options for third party websites.  This new release also supports Persistent URLs for bookmarking and sharing specific records.

Forthcoming Members Services

  • Title List Comparison. This facility helps a library discover the archival status of a list of serials:  identifying those that are being ingested for preservation and those which are still “at risk”.
  • Linking Options. These enable other service providers who may wish to report Keepers Registry information within the interface of their own website. Currently we have two options:
    1. A machine to machine interface using SRU or Z39.50.
    2. An OpenURL resolver to support prospective linking.

Sign Up

To sign up for early access to our Member Services and to help test our new features, please complete the form below.


Further Information

Further information about the Member Services is as follows:

Title List Comparison

This has a simple 5 step process:

  1. The library prepares a CSV file (or spreadsheet) that lists an ISSN for each serial of interest. This file is typically exported from a library’s link resolver or OPAC.
  2. The CSV file is uploaded to the Title List Comparison service.
  3. Each of the serial titles listed in the CSV file is cross-checked against metadata from selected Keeper agencies. The comparison uses the ISSN-L, the linking ISSN that acts as a common identifier between electronic and print ISSNs.
  4. A composite file is produced that includes the data initially uploaded plus information on what is preserved and what is not.
  5. You will be sent an email with a download link for this composite file, plus summary statistics from the comparison:
    • Percentage (%) and number of titles that are ingested and archived by 3 or more Keepers
    • Percentage (%) and number of titles for which there is “no known preservation taking place”, therefore are at risk of loss.

Linking Options

The M2M interface does not make available bibliographic information from the ISSN Register. If you need access to bibliographic information, please refer to the ISSN Portal (http://www.issn.org/2-22655-The-ISSN-Portal.php).

 

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UKLA Roundup: January 2014

The January 2014 roundup from the UK LOCKSS Alliance support service is now available.  This roundup highlights recent activity around Private LOCKSS Networks, notably highlighting the growing community activity with other PLNs in the form of monthly tele-conference calls.

If you’d like to join future calls, or if you have comments, queries, or suggestions for future content please contact edina@ed.ac.uk.

UKLA Roundup: October 2013

The October 2013 roundup from the UK LOCKSS Alliance support service is now available.

This roundup highlights ongoing system and content development, and keeps members informed of the activities of EDINA and other UKLA members.  This roundup comprises a detailed look at new functionality to help you get more value from LOCKSS and features that assist with collection management workflows.

If you have comments, queries, or suggestions for future content please contact edina@ed.ac.uk.

New experimental features in LOCKSS

The LOCKSS development team have been working hard over the summer to implement new functionality to assist collection administration and management.  Three new experimental features are available for use.

Note, these new features are being tested by the user community and if you enable these features you may encounter minor problems.  We’d appreciate your help in testing and improving them:  please send feedback to edina@ed.ac.uk.  Please send comments on usability, bug reports, and additional feature requests.  Expanded documentation will be released in future months.

Subscription Manager

To reduce collection management requirements, system administrators will use the Subscription Manager to register institutional ‘holdings’ for each title so that when new volumes are released, these are configured automatically for collection by the institution’s LOCKSS box.

To enable the SubscriptionManager feature, add the following parameters to ExpertConfig and restart LOCKSS:

  • org.lockss.subscription.enabled=true
  • org.lockss.metadataManager.indexing_enabled=true
  • org.lockss.dbManager.enabled=true

Initial and draft documentation for the SubscriptionManager feature is now available.  If you have comments on the documentation, please contact edina@ed.ac.uk

Display Content Status

To assist with collection management the Display Content Status function shows you what content is configured for collection and, within that, what has been collected successfully and where problems have arisen. 

To enable the DisplayContentStatus feature,  add the following parameters to ExpertConfig and restart LOCKSS:

  • org.lockss.ui.transitional=true

COUNTER reports

LOCKSS can now generate reports compliant with the latest COUNTER Code of practice for e-resources.  It is possible to generate both a JR1 and JR5 report. Each report appears in two versions, one of them with the postfix “L” (for “L”OCKSS). 

  • Reports with the “L” postfix include all the usage requested through the LOCKSS box. By default, when content is requested through a LOCKSS box the request is forwarded to the publisher. If the publisher’s content is different or newer than that preserved by the LOCKSS box, the publisher’s version is served. The “L” report includes these usages.
  • The reports without the “L” postfix include only usage where the LOCKSS box could not involve the publisher (which is rare) to avoid double-counting the hits. The underlying assumption is that the publisher will include, in its own COUNTER report, the hits of which it is aware .

We suggest enabling this feature once you have integrated LOCKSS with your institutional link resolver system.

To enable the COUNTER reports feature, add the following parameters to ExpertConfig and restart LOCKSS:

  • org.lockss.report.counterEnabled=true
  • org.lockss.metadataManager.indexing_enabled=true
  • org.lockss.dbManager.enabled=true