Ebook and EJournal Preservation
Annotations by Kari Theisen and Lorraine Eaton
E-Book and E-Journal Preservation: An Annotated Bibliography
Definition of Project
The increasing importance of electronic journals (e-journals) and electronic books (e-books) in library collections means digital practitioners must understand how best to preserve them for future use and access. This bibliography presents both an overview of e-journal and e-book preservation, as well as more detailed topics of specific concern such as metadata issues, file formats, repositories, legal deposit, and preservation technologies. Some of the resources provided pertain to both e-journal and e-book preservation, while others are focused on one or the other. A thorough review of scholarly publications was conducted to compile the articles that follow. In addition, the websites of national and international coalitions dedicated to digital preservation were consulted for applicable research. Due to the fact that technology changes quickly, a concerted effort has been made to include only resources published since 2005. In addition, the focus of these articles is on born-digital journals and books, so there is no discussion of digitization or massive digital libraries such as Google Books or the HathiTrust.
Annotations
Neil Beagrie’s report is an in-depth look at issues that professionals face in relation to digital preservation and access for e-journals. Information professionals interested in digital preservation of e-journals are provided with numerous sections on issues related to the process of e-journal preservation including standards and best practices for preservation, use cases, and trustworthiness of e-journal preservation. Although it provides information on more than just the technology related to e-journal preservation, the section on services provides a “concise overview of the main preservation and continuing access services available for e-journals” (p. 18). The watch report also discusses the concept of trust for digital preservation including the need for conducting audits of e-journal preservation services. Overall, this report provides a breadth of information regarding the technologies used in e-journal preservation and the processes associated with implementing these technologies in information institutions.
Preservationists must understand the types and limitations of the e-book formats they hope to preserve. This resource was written to inform members of the European and International Booksellers Federation about the problems confronting readers of e-books. Implicit in the discussion are the common frustrations felt by repository managers in attempting to democratize access to e-books. The intent of the authors is to determine whether there is any benefit to having multiple e-book formats. The authors analyze the three main e-book formats and the closed ecosystems erected by e-book retailers such as Apple and Amazon. They also study how digital rights management is applied in each of these ecosystems. In their conclusion, the authors come down firmly on the side of EPUB 3 as the format that should see universal adoption because it offers the most technological flexibility. This resource will enhance the preservationists understanding of variances in the major formats in the e-book ecosystem, as well as review metadata schemes and the challenges of digital rights management.
In this brief article, Brantley brings a looming gap in the digital literature record to the attention of preservationists, that of the self-published e-book. Self-published authors run the gamut from fan fiction and science fiction, to memoir and family history. Archivists interested in preserving the historical record should be aware of these last two categories in particular. As self-publishing services become ubiquitous and more writers choose to sidestep the gatekeepers at major publishing houses, a growing number of e-books may not find their way onto library shelves at all and must be captured from the wild web if they are to be preserved. As an example, Brantley notes that the Library of Congress did not collect early pulp fiction novels that were printed on cheap acidic paper, and as a result there is a gap in the collection. Though the article is intended to alert librarians and archivists to this issue, the author suggests that libraries develop relationships with e-book retailers that specialize in independent and self-published authors, particularly on topics of local history or interest.
Repository professionals who are charged with the preservation of e-books through a legal deposit mandate must understand the multiple responsibilities this process entails. “National libraries embarking on projects on legal deposit of electronic publications and more specifically electronic books need to consider aspects of the collection, preservation and accessibility of the legal deposit collection” (p. 99). The first of these is an understanding of legislative or institutional policies. Additional challenges discussed include legal and ethical considerations, environmental factors, establishing a workflow for deposits, building skills for repository managers, the cost of legal deposit, and building trust with both publishers and patrons. In order to find solutions to these challenges, the authors encourage further research by national libraries. De Beer et al. reviewed much of the past literature on these topics, and the reference list, which includes over 60 sources, will be useful for researchers interested in delving deeper into a particular area.
Before ingesting e-books for preservation in a repository, managers must understand the metadata that accompanies these electronic works. This metadata may be supplied by the publisher or the distributor. The authors describe one common publishing industry metadata standard they encounter, Online Information eXchange (ONIX). They outline how this metadata standard is used for printed books and how they created a model with mandatory, optional, and preferred fields for e-books being cataloged for legal deposit. They discuss development of a cataloging workflow and a taskforce to suggestion improvements for integrating digital objects more effectively. Preservationists will gain a richer understanding of how e-books are catalogued in a national legal deposit environment and will find a discussion of resource description and access (RDA) standards. The authors also reflect on the nature of e-books and where they fall on the spectrum between printed and electronic resources, a discussion relevant to repository managers as well. This article offers both an international and a legal deposit perspective on preservation metadata.
This article provides background on the changing landscape of e-journal preservation and how Portico responds to these challenges. Portico is a popular digital preservation infrastructure used for the preservation of electronic scholarly resources, especially e-journals and e-books. Institutions provide access to their e-journal collections for Portico to archive. An institution accesses their archived e-journals through Portico after trigger events occurs. These trigger events include publishers not publishing the journal anymore, publishers going out of business, or disasters. Accessing preserved e-journals through Portico includes the participation of publishers and libraries. In his article, Fenton describes the roles which these member publishers and libraries play in Portico’s e-journal preservation and the ways in which users can access and sustain their e-journal archives. All of the information Fenton provides in the article is useful for understanding the landscape of electronic resource preservation and how e-journal preservation is integrated into this landscape through the use of Portico. Having the background on scholarly electronic preservation before describing Portico allows archivists thinking about implementing an e-journal preservation solution to learn the theoretical and practical applications of Portico in the real world.
Complications related to licensing, authorization, and duplication are of large concern to institutions preserving e-journals. Responding to these concerns by utilizing e-journal preservation services helps institutions to “maintain the core values of librarianship while allowing institutions to maintain the level of accessibility to resources patrons are now accustomed to” (p. 29). Robert Fox’s article helps institutions new to e-journal preservation learn more about the different preservation services available. What makes his article different is that he focuses solely on Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) and Portico and compares the two approaches. This means that there is a more concerted effort on the author’s part to show the advantages and disadvantages of each preservation method. However, like many other articles on e-journal preservation, Fox does not propose that one method provides the best solution. Instead, Fox believes that “implementing both LOCKSS and becoming a Portico member, and the choice between one solution or another is not necessarily exclusive” (p.27). Instead of instilling confidence, this leaves the readers with an ambiguous sense of understanding in the real world applications of Portico and LOCKSS.
Administrative and descriptive metadata accompanies e-books when they arrive at a library or repository. In order to properly preserve the e-book however, preservation-specific metadata must be added. This chapter in Frederick’s book on e-book metadata focuses specifically on preservation metadata. The author approaches the subject from the perspective of libraries charged with managing different kinds of electronic document repositories, including institutional repositories, electronic theses and dissertations, and other monograph collections. The author discusses topics such the purchase of archiving rights from publishers, what it means to provide perpetual access to an e-book, how subscriptions impact e-book access, and the deselection of e-books. Libraries charged with e-book preservation will gain an understanding of both internal systems and external services available to aid them in successful e-book archiving.
The move from print journal publication to e-journal publication creates the need for libraries and publishing companies to work together toward a preservation solution. By surveying numerous institutions’ criteria for success in digital preservation, Sadie L. Honey suggests her own criteria for analyzing approaches to e-journal preservation. The criteria is based on technical constraints, licensing constraints, and economic concerns. Honey analyzes three approaches to e-journal preservation that are the basis of many e-journal preservation initiatives: dark archives, moving wall archives, and caching approaches. Dark archives are archiving institutions where rights holders periodically deposit digital materials so that they can be made available at a later date. Moving Wall Archives are similar to dark archives in that rights holders periodically deposit materials, but older materials are made publically available. Caching software regularly downloads materials from rights holders and stores these materials in multiple locations for ease of access. Studies on these three approaches to e-journal preservation have not been reported widely in e-journal preservation literature. This provides a unique approach to e-journal preservation and gives institutions more choices in their preservation services. By providing a more in-depth analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each preservation method and a comparison of each approach, Honey increases libraries’ understandings of the different approaches to e-journal preservation. Her article is one of a small number of articles that focuses on not only the technical constraints, but also the financial impact of each preservation approach.
Both librarians and archivists need to understand the role that e-book consortia and repositories play in the preservation of and perpetual access to e-books. These consortia often exist in a space between publisher and library. Horva offers libraries considering participation in a consortium with a discussion of the pros and cons inherent in a collaboration around e-book preservation. Of particular interest to librarians working in academic libraries will be the e-book platform that the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), 21 publicly funded universities in Canada, developed to provide access to scholarly monographs. The author discusses working with vendors and developing a licensing template. The OCUL consortium serves as a counter weight to other repository collaborations such as Portico and LOCKSS.
Amy Kirchhoff is a leading researcher and publisher in the discipline of scholarly digital preservation. In this article, she provides insight into not only the technical aspects of Portico, but also provides readers with lessons that she learned throughout her studies on community involvement with Portico. These lessons include responding to community needs, identifying policies through practice, extending infrastructure and scale when needed, and including diverse participants in the membership network. By explaining lessons that helped shape ongoing e-journal preservation initiatives like Portico, Kirchhoff provides much needed guidance in a field that is constantly changing and growing as digital content becomes more prevalent in scholarly communication. Although the article does not focus solely on e-journal preservation uses of Portico, the lessons learned can be used to create and maintain any type of e-journal preservation initiative an institution puts in place.
If archivists and librarians read only one article on e-book preservation, this is the one to read. Amy Kirchhoff, the lead author of this report, has been published widely on the topic of e-book and e-journal preservation and her work has been summarized by others. Readers will gain an understanding of the history of e-books as a technology, business models adopted by both publishers and retailers (Amazon, Apple, etc.), digital rights management, how formats were developed, and relevant metadata standards. Key issues include concern over proprietary formats and platforms, as well as perpetual access and preservation rights. Especially, helpful for those unfamiliar with the topic is a glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading. In addition, the recommended actions for both publishers and libraries offer useful suggestions for becoming part of the solution. Among these are the adoption of a single, universal standard and close collaboration between publishers and memory institutions focused on preservation and long-term access.
E-book designs have begun to evolve beyond the text-only format of a linear narrative. Martin and Aitken give e-book curators and preservationists a glimpse into the kinds of dynamic content they will likely need to prepare for in the future. “It might include video, animations, kinetic typography, hyperlinks, geo-location, social interaction” (p. 139). Other e-books might have a reader generated narrative much like a computer game. Understanding these new forms that are being embedded in e-books is the first step toward understanding how to preserve them as fully as possible. Ideally, digital curators will be present at the design stage of the next generation of e-books and will be able to advocate for the selection of standard formats and metadata schemas. This resource shows curators how authors and book designers are working together to create new e-book forms.
Is a standard e-book format really a standard if the largest seller of e-books doesn’t adhere to it? This is the conundrum McIlroy takes on, providing preservationists with texture in regard to the ongoing issue of multiple proprietary e-book formats. The author outlines six reasons for the confusion, which range from the limitations of the earliest version of EPUB to the self-interest of digital retailers that developed formats that were platform specific in order to lock customers into a single format and a single reading device. Readers will gain a better understanding of the pros and cons of three the principal e-book formats: PDF, Amazon’s Mobi KF8, and EPUB. Apple’s iBooks format, a variant of EPUB is not discussed. The author discusses the evolution of EPUB to its current version, EPUB 3, and provides additional resources to better understand its capabilities if a reader wishes to delve more deeply into this standard.
This short article succinctly describes the different initiatives used to preserve e-journals. Mering provides information on all of the initiatives in one place and shows how each one is useful for e-journal preservation. Other articles written on e-journal preservation describe the use of Portico and LOCKSS. Mering’s article goes further and describes other initiatives including CHORUS, CLOCKSS, and the Keepers Registry. Each of these initiatives have specific missions and roles when providing access to electronic resources. Each also provides different benefits and costs related to becoming members of the initiative. By writing this article, Mering provides an easy to understand resource on e-journal technologies and initiatives for institutions just starting on the e-journal preservation journey. Overall, Mering’s article helps users understand how these e-journal preservation initiatives “point the way toward a future where everyone involved in scholarship can increasingly rely on electronic content and feel confident in its stability and availability” (p. 264).
This study of existing e-journal preservation models describes concerns relating to preservation including “what should be archived, who should be responsible for the archiving process, how the materials should be archived and where they should be archived” (p. 83). To help alleviate these preservation concerns, Moghaddam’s article reviews some of the popular initiatives that archive scientific e-journals including Portico, LOCKSS, and the KB e-Depot. What sets this article apart from other reviews of e-journal preservation initiatives is its inclusion of lesser known preservation initiatives such as JSTOR, OCLC Digital Archives, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), PubMed Central, E-Print Repositories, and Open Access Model. Like many articles that focus on e-journal preservation, Moghaddam’s article does not provide a preservation solution but focuses on the ever-changing nature of e-journal preservation. This is due to the fact that “because information technology is continually changing at a rapid pace, many more initiatives may be create and developed by various institutions” (p.94). Learning about the fluidity of e-journal preservation technology empowers archivists to experiment and personalize their own approaches to e-journal preservation.
The KB e-Depot is a repository created by the National Library of the Netherlands to archive e-journals for future use. The KB e-Depot “possess a sound technical and organizational infrastructure and specialist skills and expertise” (p. 606) that helps the library play a large role in the international e-journal preservation community. Oltmans and van Wijngaarden’s article provides an in-depth look at the background of the KB e-Depot and the National Library of the Netherlands’ approach to digital preservation. Because it is a case study of a specific process used for digital preservation, it provides a much needed look at how to apply digital preservation in a real life setting. This includes describing funding, organizational structures, agreements with publishers, and technical architecture and workflows. Understanding the processes that go into creating a preservation initiative like the KB e-Depot gives ideas to new practitioners just starting to look into e-journal preservation and helps guide them through the process of creating their own preservation initiative.
Regan states in her article that “the responsibility for and the initiative to preserve electronic journal content is neither clear nor easy” (p. 89). The key players in e-journal preservation have been studied in-depth in numerous other articles on e-journal preservation. However, Regan’s article raises questions not asked in many of these articles. Asking questions such as which types of e-journals are not preserved, why they are not preserved, and how to preserve more content from e-journals helps archivists develop a deeper understanding of the processes of e-journal preservation. The article describes licensing negotiation, different types of hosting institutions, outreach and awareness for e-journal preservation, and funding opportunities. Because of this approach toward e-journal preservation, Regan is more focused on the whys of preservation. However, the inclusion of preservation technologies and initiatives like Portico, LOCKSS, and CLOCKSS throughout the article allow readers to understand how these technologies impact preservation issues such as copyright and access. Unlike other articles which only focus on large preservation initiatives, Regan also provides information on simpler solutions for access such as plug-ins and registries that are not covered in other articles. Overall, Regan provides a look at how preservation initiatives respond to questions being asked regarding the expansion of e-journal preservation processes.
Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) is a digital preservation software that preserves e-journals and e-books for libraries. Each institutions’ LOCKSS box stores preserved e-journals and multiple institutions’ LOCKSS boxes can share content with one another. Schneider’s article describes LOCKSS, including its installation, maintenance, and format migration functions. Although it is not a long article, it is able to provide a more succinct explanation of LOCKSS that does not confuse the reader. Like other authors writing about e-journal preservation Schneider provides a comparison between two preservation initiatives, in this case LOCKSS and Portico. Through her analysis of LOCKSS and its relation to Portico, Schneider concludes that using multiple e-journal preservation technologies is not mutually exclusive. She finds that “some libraries are opting for LOCKSS, some Portico, and few, like the University of Connecticut Libraries, are trying both” (p. 30). The multi-system approach Schneider describes in her article shows readers the vast range of e-journal preservation software available to them, while expounding on the complicated nature of the e-journal preservation environment.
This webinar, hosted by Center for Research Libraries, provides librarians and archivists with an update on Portico, a nonprofit preservation service, and their work with e-books. The presenters review Porticos repository statistics and note a marked increase in e-books preserved since 2012. As of the date of the presentation, 669,430 e-books have been preserved in Portico. Portico works with 131 publishers that have committed to the preservation of their electronic titles. For e-books preserved in the repository, Portico has the ability to “trigger” an e-book in the event that a publisher can no longer provide a library with access to an e-book. Viewers will gain an understanding of the workflows Portico has created to preserve e-books in their repository and see screen shots of how objects appear behind the scenes. Presenters discuss where they see e-book preservation services at Portico heading and answer questions. The full presentation is one hour: 40 minutes of presentation and 20 minutes of question/answer.
