Heather Morrison is quite right to note that there is no inherent conflict between efforts to provide self-archived content and parallel efforts to preserve it.
I expect this to be illustrated when JISC announces the results of its Circular 4/04: Call for Projects in Supporting Institutional Digital Preservation and Asset Management (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding_circular4_04), which is likely to include one or more projects concerned with eprints-related preservation. In the context of this thread, these projects will raise issues that will need to be aired - but, I hope, not the charge that OA preservation projects hinder progress in filling the OA archives. Those issues will have to wait until the projects are announced. Until then it ought to be noted that what matters most for institutional archives is immediate OA content provision, and in parallel with the ongoing content provision, the preservation of that OA content. There are practical issues about the coordination between the needs of eprints services and preservation requirements to sort out: pace, timescales, chronology. There are also some separate issues concerning selection criteria and the provision of a network infrastructure for preservation service providers. All of these can be productively worked out as long as it is clear that immediate OA content can continue to be provided. The parallel long-term preservation efforts are another incentive for providing that content. Steve Hitchcock IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865 At 08:31 05/10/04 -0700, Heather Morrison wrote:
To me, there is no inherent conflict between the need to address access and the need to address preservation. For example, I am completely in favor of moving immediately to open access - both OA publishing and developing and filling institutional repositories as quickly as possible - while other issues, such as preservation, are figured out, at the same time. Discussing other issues of importance in relation to scholarly communications does not mean that one is proposing any delay in moving to OA. For example, as universities develop their institutional repositories, most will likely develop policies for the IR at the same time. These policies may well be revised later, but the major policy development work is likely to occur at the outset. There are other questions to consider besides access, and preservation is one of these. The difference between discussing these in public and not discussing these in public is that the former course makes it easy for those doing this work to discover a range of potential views and approaches, while the latter forces each to proceed independently. For this reason, I would suggest that discussing other needs of scholarly communication, such as access, expedites the process of developing institutional repositories. cheers, Heather G. Morrison Project Coordinator BC Electronic Library Network ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Phone: 604-268-7001 Fax: 604-291-3023 Email: heath...@eln.bc.ca Web: http://www.eln.bc.ca
