Author Archives: Adam Rusbridge

LOCKSS Program endorses the KBART Recommended Practice

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We are pleased to announce that the LOCKSS program now publicly endorses the KBART Recommended Practice.  Details of the LOCKSS KBART-compliant knowledge base can be found on the KBART Contacts Registry, annotated with a KBART logo to indicate our UKSG-verified compliance with the standard.

The NISO and UKSG press release with further details about the KBART initiative is copied below:

NISO and UKSG Announce Five More Publishers Endorse KBART

Metadata in OpenURL knowledge bases improved through implementation of KBART recommendations

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the UKSG are pleased to announce that BioOne, JSTOR, LOCKSS, the Royal Society of Chemistry and SpringerLink (hosted by Metapress) are the most recent organizations to publicly endorse the Phase I recommendations of the KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) Working Group, a joint NISO/UKSG initiative that is exploring data problems within the OpenURL supply chain. KBART’s Phase I Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2010), published in January 2010, contains practical recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers.

All content providers, from major databases to small publishers, are encouraged to publicly endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by submitting a sample file to the KBART working group. Once the file’s format and content has been reviewed and approved, and the provider has made it publicly available (in line with the recommendations), the provider will be added to a public list of endorsing providers. Knowledge base developers can endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by confirming that their systems can process KBART formatted files. In addition, a contacts registry is available on the KBART Information Hub at www.uksg.org/kbart or www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart where content providers and knowledge base developers can register their organization’s information for downloading holdings metadata.

Sarah Price, KBART Co-chair and E-Resources & Serials Coordinator at the University of Birmingham, comments: “It’s really encouraging from both a KBART and library perspective to see the uptake of the KBART recommendations from content providers. It demonstrates the commitment to improving metadata to aid discovery which in turn will benefit the whole community through increased usage, ease of discovery and user satisfaction.”

The KBART working group is now progressing towards the end of Phase II and is focusing on enhancing the current recommendations with new guidelines for eBook, consortia and Open Access metadata.

KBART Co-chair Andreas Biedenbach, Independent Publishing Professional, concludes, “I am very pleased with the interest we have raised for our working group. It is encouraging that we find more and more organizations endorsing our recommendations and that we were able to add these renowned companies to our endorsement list this month. We look forward to collaborating with further parties involved in the e-resource metadata management in the near future and to the upcoming tasks in connection with our Phase II work.”

For more information on endorsement, to review the KBART Recommended Practice, or to find out how to get involved in future phases of KBART’s work, please visit www.uksg.org/kbart or www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart.

*About NISO*

NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org. For more information please contact NISO at (301) 654-2512 or via e-mail at nisohq@niso.org.

*About UKSG*

UKSG exists to connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication. It spans the wide range of interests and activities of the extended scholarly information community of librarians, publishers, intermediaries and technology vendors. In a dynamic environment, UKSG works to:

* facilitate community integration, networking, discussion and   exchange of ideas,

* improve members’ knowledge of the scholarly information sector and support skills development,

* stimulate research and collaborative initiatives, encourage   innovation and promote standards for good practice, and

* disseminate news, information and publications, and raise awareness of services that support the scholarly information sector.

For more information, please visit the UKSG website, www.uksg.org.

 

One year on for the Keepers Registry beta service

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© http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenat_el3ain/3727013559/

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

Data 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.

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UKLA Roundup: August 2012

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The August 2012 roundup from the UK LOCKSS Alliance support service is now available.

The intention of this roundup is to highlight ongoing system and content development, and to keep members informed of the activities of EDINA and other UKLA members.

Please note in particular the new documentation around integration of LOCKSS with Serials Solutions 360Link and Ex Libris’ SFX, and the spreadsheets made available as part of the content release process.

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

Draft Inclusion Criteria released for review

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A public draft of inclusion criteria for archiving agencies that wish to participate in the Keepers Registry is now available for public review.  We would welcome feedback and community input by the 31st July 2012 either to edina@ed.ac.uk or in the comments below.

For example, it would be helpful to receive comment on any other criteria that readers think we should consider.

The criteria are intended to ensure that we develop an understanding of the operating model and financial and access conditions of archiving organisations.  Completing the criteria is intended to expose consistent information about archiving agencies to assess suitability for inclusion in the Keepers Registry; it is not intended to be an audit of the organisation.

The Keepers Registry service makes available easily accessible information about the inclusion of journals in preservation services.  It provides an authoritative online facility that lets a range of stakeholders check the archival provision for e-journals.  Although archiving arrangements have been in place for some years, prior to the Keepers Registry there was no systematic source of information about who is doing what for each e-journal.

Participating agencies regularly provide the Keepers Registry with metadata about the e-journals in their programme.  At launch of the PEPRS Beta Service in April 2011, we included metadata from five initial agencies (British Library, CLOCKSS Archive, KB eDepot, Global LOCKSS Network, Portico).  We have since added two more agencies:  HathiTrust in October 2011, and National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences in March 2012.  A number of additional agencies have approached us regarding participation and are at varying stages of inclusion.   We are encouraging these additional archiving agencies to adopt the ONIX for Preservation Holdings format for data supply.

Download the inclusion criteria document here [PDF, 154KB].

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Report on Private LOCKSS Networks

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A report investigating community demand and requirements for setting up a UK Private LOCKSS Network is now available.

The report summarises a survey of members of the UK LOCKSS Alliance carried out by EDINA during October and November 2011. The survey investigated the potential value of Private LOCKSS Networks to UKLA members and focused on assessing the type of content members wish to preserve in a PLN, together with the cost and resource implications.

Agreed at the UKLA Members’ Meeting in May 2012, next steps are to prepare a short proposal identifying possible routes forward.

A Members’ Meeting of the UKLA was held in York on 10 May 2011 where attendees expressed an enthusiasm for further assessment of PLNs. The approach agreed was to conduct a survey of members to assess the level of interest for establishing a PLN, and to gather more detailed information on community requirements:  how members could envisage the PLN being structured, the content they proposed using it for, and how they expected to benefit from the PLN. A full report of this event is available on the UKLA website.  The PLN survey was carried out during October and November 2011 and focused on identifying content for preservation, costs and resources together with potential infrastructure models. The purpose of this report is to summarise the results of the survey and apply them to the various factors that need consideration when establishing a new PLN.

We would be grateful for UK HE community feedback on this report, so please either submit a comment to this post, or contact EDINA directly at edina@ed.ac.uk.

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ONIX for Preservation Holdings

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As part of our efforts to simplify the data ingest process, EDINA has participated in a working group to extend the ONIX for Serials format to handle specific e-journal preservation information requirements.  This cross-sector working group also included representatives from a number of archiving agencies participating in the Keepers Registry.

The ONIX for Preservation Holdings standard (http://www.editeur.org/127/ONIX-PH/) has now been made available in a draft v0.21 and is now undergoing pilot exchanges.  On conclusion of the pilot, the message will be modified as necessary and released in a formal v1.0.

At EDINA, we are encouraging prospective and new archiving agencies to implement the ONIX-PH standard when supplying data to the Keepers Registry.  We also plan to encourage existing institutions to adopt the standard, helping us improve the efficiency of our data processes.

To test the standard and to improve awareness of the structure of an ONIX-PH message, we have produced a simple sample file which can be used as a reference guide.  If other organisations make available sample or full files, we are interested in learning of these and pointing others towards them.

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UKLA Roundup: June 2012

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The June 2012 roundup from the UK LOCKSS Alliance support service is now available.

The intention of this roundup is to highlight ongoing system and content development, and to keep members informed of the activities of EDINA and other UKLA members.

Please note in particular the summary report and presentations from the UKLA Members’ Meeting, and the persona and requirements documents that support the ongoing user interface enhancement activity.

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

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UKLA Members’ Meeting: Presentations now available

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A UK LOCKSS Alliance Members’ Meeting was held on the 24th May 2012, at the National Railway Museum in York.  The event was intended to provide current members with an update of recent activities, a forum to share information between member institutions, and an opportunity to discuss and plan activity for the period from now until 2013.

The full agenda and presentations are available online at: http://www.lockssalliance.ac.uk/meetings-and-events/

A number of key activities were discussed:

  • A service review of the UK LOCKSS Alliance was undertaken in September 2011 and has provided EDINA with clear strategic direction for communication and development activity.
  • A regular news roundup has been established, published on a six-week cycle.  The roundup contains contributions from the development and support teams at EDINA and Stanford, and member contributions from the UK and international communities.
  • The review highlighted the need for enhancements to the user interface. After discussion with Stanford University, EDINA has taken on a project management role for these and has produced a set of requirements and drafted a design proposal.  The document has been distributed to the membership for comment and implementation will begin shortly.
  • Functionality to integrate LOCKSS with link resolver systems has recently been released.  This has been a key requirement for current and prospective members, and will be a useful promotional tool both for recruitment of members and for development of institutional support.

Update 4th June 2012: A summary report from the event is now available.

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Introducing the UKLA Personas

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At last week’s Members’ Meeting we introduced a set of personas to describe the background, aims and roles of staff working with the LOCKSS system.  Personas are “descriptions of typical users along with stories about how they would use the product to meet their goals.”  The personas we have established will inform our user interface development work.  By developing an understanding of staff roles we can make sure the planned developments satisfy those roles.

We’re now making available the set of draft personas for further input and comment.

These personas also have wider application for the UK LOCKSS Alliance community.  They will be useful for prospective members planning their participation in the LOCKSS initiative and deciding how to assign LOCKSS-related work, and they will help us ensure we target support documentation at the appropriate level.

We wish to ensure that the characteristics of current institutional deployments of LOCKSS are reflected in the personas.  If you feel we are missing tasks and goals that apply at your institution,  we would be grateful if you could share these by commenting on this blog post or emailing edina@ed.ac.uk.

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