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KEY ISSUE
Balanced Scorecard Initiative 49
COLLECTING AUSTRALIAN ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
The purpose of this paper is to review the success of the existing collecting objectives for Australian online publications against current online publishing activity and to identify ways in which access can be provided to a greater range of Australian online publications.
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Objectives of BSC 49
Milestones:
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CONTENTS
Key issue that needs discussion and decision or agreement by CDMC 3
Executive summary 4
Part A Background and introduction 8
Part B Categories of online publications and issues related to collecting them 17
10.1 Government publications 18
10.2 Australian web domain snapshot or part thereof 23
10.3 Commercial publications 25
10.4 Maps 27
10.5 Music 29
10.6 Adult sites 31
10.7 E-prints 32
10.8 Databases and the ‘deep web’ 33
10.9 Datasets 35
10.10 Online daily newspapers 37
10.11 News sites 40
10.12 Discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups 42
10.13 CAMS 44
10.14 Blogs 45
10.15 Portals 46
10.16 Games 48
Part C Proposal 49
Summary of recommendations 55
Appendix A Definition of [Commonwealth Government] publication 58
Key issue that needs discussion and decision by CDMC
Facing the reality that the Library is unable to archive everything that it would like to archive, some hard decisions need to be made. This paper recommends that the Library should not at this time expand collecting into new categories of online publications. Instead it should prioritise its collecting of online publications currently within scope to focus on six categories:
None of these categories can be collected comprehensively and each will require selection guidelines to be developed in order to define clearly what we will collect.
This means that some categories currently being collected, such as literature sites, will not be given priority but will be collected as resources allow.
Categories identified by the review that have not been collected to date and that will continue to be excluded are:
The choice is between collecting a broader range of publications superficially, or focusing the collection activity and archiving defined areas in some depth. This paper recommends the second choice but debate at the CDMC meeting and a decision by the Committee is important to achieve a position that most can live with.
Executive Summary
Part A provides background information and an introduction to the review of collecting Australian online publications.
Since 1996 when the Library began archiving Australian online publications, it has, in cooperation with its partners, built a selective Archive of world standing, which currently contains 3,400 titles.
Only a small number of national libraries elsewhere in the world have set up archives and most of these have been in progress from the mid to late 1990s. A variety of approaches have been adopted: selective archiving of static web resources; selective archiving of static and dynamic resources; whole of domain harvesting; a combination of selective and whole domain harvesting; and archiving based on collaborative agreements with selected commercial publishers.
All of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages and it is interesting to note that each of the national libraries, after several years of archiving in their chosen method, is now reviewing their achievements, and seeing the shortcomings of their adopted approach. There is no ideal approach at this stage.
The selective approach adopted by the National Library of Australia enables us to achieve four important objectives:
The disadvantages of the selective approach are:
From the Library’s point of view, at this stage of technical development, the advantages of the selective approach outweigh the disadvantages. The disadvantages of whole of domain harvesting, including the high cost, mean that the selective approach remains the most viable for the Library.
Part B of the paper looks in detail at categories of online publications either not being collected or being collected but requiring a change of collecting scope, method or policy.
Government publications are identified as a category requiring particular attention in order to improve our capacity to deal with the large volume of these very high priority publications. It is recommended that the Library investigate the feasibility of two broad strategies;
The Library already has approximately 90 commercial publications in the Archive. However, there is a need to work in a more cooperative way with mainstream commercial publishers. The draft Code of Practice that has been developed with the Australian Publisher’s Association (APA) needs to be tested before the APA is willing to publicly accept it. It is planned to undertake a test in 2003.
Databases are a major source of information on the web and comprise the ‘deep web’, which is inaccessible to search engines and harvesting robots. The Library has selected a number of sites that are structured as databases, including maps, but has so far been unable to archive them. A research project scheduled by CITG to begin in the first half of 2003 will seek to find solutions to managing database publications.
The scores of original music are only just beginning to make an appearance on the Australian domain, and music will now be selected and archived according to new guidelines.
Adult sites will be treated as one of the nominated subject areas to be archived on a three-year rolling basis.
Under ideal circumstances of adequate funding, the Library would like to be able to undertake periodic web domain harvests to supplement the selective Archive. There would be two possible approaches to this: undertake the development work and the harvests ourselves; work with the Internet Archive. Both approaches would be costly and beyond the means of the Library to undertake as well as maintaining the selective Archive.
In 2002 the Internet Archive proposed a consortium of national libraries to explore the issues relating to the development of national online collections. It was also proposed to build a harvesting robot. However, membership of the consortium was far more than the Library could afford. In any case, it is more appropriate for these issues to be pursued through the CDNL Digital Issues Working Group, which the Library plans to actively participate in.
This paper examines a number of categories of online resources not previously collected by the Library. These include discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups; online daily newspapers; other news sites; datasets; CAMS; blogs; portals; and games. Except for the last two, it was considered that there would be research value in adding some examples to the Archive. However, given other, higher priorities, it was recommended that items in these categories not be selected and archived at this stage.
Part C of the paper proposes a way forward. The Library’s strategic approach to archiving and preserving Australian online resources is a collaborative one and as well as the State and Territory libraries with which it is already working closely it will seek to establish working relationships with other sectors such as the tertiary education, government and commercial sectors.
In the short term, however, these other sectors are not sufficiently developed in their organisation or technical infrastructure to assume their part in a national distributed archive, which, by default, leaves the PANDORA partners with a larger load than we can manage.
It is therefore necessary to set priorities for collecting. While it was originally expected that the review would lead to an extension of collecting into identified new areas of online publishing, this is now not considered possible. Limited staff resources and increased publishing output in all the existing categories mean that even collecting of existing categories will need to be prioritised.
It is proposed to focus collecting on six categories:
Equal weight will be given to each of these categories and further work will need to be done to develop more specific selection guidelines for each.
The following categories will not be collected, even though the review identified some value in doing so:
Portals and games will continue to be excluded as it is considered there are still good reasons for doing so.
The consequences of this approach are that the archive will lose some of its diversity, but will gain depth and historical perspective in nominated subject areas. What the Library and partners do not archive is likely to be lost, because at this point in time it is unlikely that anyone else will do so. This approach will enable us to more clearly define what we are collecting and to communicate this to publishers researchers and other interested parties.
It is proposed to involve staff in other areas of Technical Services and Information Services in the identification and selection of publications for the Archive so that PANDORA can benefit from a wider knowledge base.
PART A
BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION
1. Background
The National Library of Australia, together with its partners, is building an archive of Australian online publications, which, for several years now, has been acknowledged internationally as a leader in its field. The Library commenced archiving web publications in 1996 when the web was still relatively new and when only the National Library of Canada already had a small pilot archive of online publications. While the Library has responded incrementally to changes taking place in the web environment, the fact remains that our policy, procedures and guidelines were formulated at a time when web formats, web publications and web usage were still relatively unsophisticated. Since that time the volume of online publication, the range of formats available to publishers, the way publishers and users use the web and their expectations of it have all increased substantially. The Library has gained confidence in archiving online publications and implemented a digital archiving management system. Its efficiency and capacity for dealing with larger volumes and more complex formats has also increased.
The Library’s strategic approach to archiving and preserving Australian resources in digital form is collaborative. From the outset, the Library has accepted that it alone cannot accept responsibility for Australia’s documentary heritage in digital form and that it must work with other organizations to ensure as wide a range of resources as possible is preserved. Collaboration must involve a range of approaches and stakeholders. The Library’s natural partners are the State and Territory libraries and they are all now collaborating with the Library to build the national digital archive.
Other sectors with whom it would be beneficial for the Library to work are the tertiary education, government and commercial publishing sectors. It is envisaged that in time such sectors will establish archives of their own output and that these will form part of a national, distributed archive, with individual nodes, including PANDORA, linked and conforming to common standards. The Library considers it has a role to play in fostering collaboration within this framework and will work with key stakeholders to develop the national distributed archive.
One important issue to address will be the need to obtain the descriptive metadata for the National Bibliographic Database.
In a climate of tight funding, a re-evaluation of what, ideally, the Library would like to be able to do and a determination of priorities for collecting within the constraints of the available funding is particularly necessary. While recognising our achievements in archiving Australian online publications, we must also take note of the deficiencies that remain to be addressed.
The Library is still optimistic that amendments to the legal deposit legislation will be implemented. We expect that new legislation would give the Library the right to remain selective. Once legal deposit provisions for online publications are in place we can consider entering into arrangements with individual publishers and/or sectors to notify the Library of new publications, thus facilitating the identification of titles for archiving.
2. What are other national libraries doing?
Since the mid 1990s there have been a small number of initiatives by national libraries around the world that have explored different approaches to archiving national documentary heritage. The results of this experimentation now afford the Library the opportunity to compare approaches and learn from them. Pam Gatenby’s study tour in August-September 20021 has given us detailed information about a number of these archiving efforts and their strengths and weaknesses. It is therefore timely that the Library formally evaluates its policy and guidelines to ensure that they continue to be relevant in the developing online environment, and that they continue to relate to and support the Library’s overall collecting intentions and its national role.
In the report of her study tour, Pam Gatenby has noted that, with one or two exceptions, the only national libraries with routine procedures in place for collecting online resources are the half dozen that commenced in the mid to late 1990s. All of the national libraries she visited, which have now had some experience with archiving publications, appeared to be at a crossroads with regard to planning their future directions for digital archiving2. Whether they are engaged in whole of domain harvesting or selective archiving, each is recognising the limitations of their chosen approach.
There are a number of approaches that national libraries are currently employing to build archives of their countries’ publications:
3. Advantages of the selective approach to archiving
A selective approach to archiving enables libraries to achieve four important objectives:
4. Disadvantages of the selective approach
In selecting titles for the archive, libraries are making subjective judgements about the value of resources and what researchers of the future are likely to find useful. Librarians have always made these collection development decisions. However, the print environment has been a more established, structured, stable and predictable environment in which to make such decisions.
Dissemination of information online is still in its infancy and the way that researchers will want to access, use and apply the potential of the web is also still developing. Though we believe that we are selecting titles based on sound professional experience and judgement, do we really know what will be important for future researchers? While selection of titles for the PANDORA Archive has been more adventurous and inclusive than any of the other national library initiatives based on selective archiving, the fact remains that selection is largely based on a traditional understanding of the concept of ‘publication’.
The extent of a selective archive is very limited in comparison with the large volume of material in a country’s domain. While it is possible to argue that a lot of this material is of no future research value, it is also certain that resources that do have value are being missed. We have little idea about what we are missing and what per cent of potentially eligible sites this constitutes.
The selective approach is very labour-intensive. The amount of material that can be archived at any one time is heavily dependent on and proportional to the number of staff that can be allocated to the activity. In a time of contracting funding for staff, the amount of archiving that can be carried out also contracts, unless increased sophistication of the technical infrastructure can be brought to bear to counteract it.
The selective approach takes a resource out of context and often does not include other resources to which it is linked. Some contextual meaning is therefore lost and this will be more critical for some resources and research requirements than others.
The value of ‘sampling’ is as yet unproven. Will this approach satisfy the majority of research needs for these kinds of resources in the future? Is it sufficiently systematic in terms of repeat archiving to record the change in a given site over time, or is their representation in the archive too sparse in terms of coverage of available sites to be of use?
5. Advantages and disadvantages of whole domain harvesting
In theory, the obvious advantage of the whole domain harvesting approach is that the whole domain is captured automatically at periodic intervals with minimal human intervention and therefore comparatively low staff cost per item gathered. The whole domain is available to future researchers and resources can be seen in their broader context, with links to other documents retained.
In practice this ideal is a long way from the truth. Because whole domain harvests are demanding in relation to computer time and storage space, they are usually run at intervals of at least several months. Any publications that come into being and disappear in the interim are missed. Many changes to publications that take place within this interval will also be missed.
Because of the huge volume of publications involved, quality control checks cannot be made on more than a very small sample of titles. Our experience would suggest that at least 40 per cent of harvested titles will be incomplete or defective in some way. Nationally significant material is likely to be missing and the archive administration will not be aware of it.
While staff costs per item are low in comparison to the selective approach, the whole of domain approach is expensive in terms of costs to download and store data.
Commercial sites that employ passwords or other inhibitors to access will not be accessible to a harvesting robot and will therefore not be gathered. Just as selective archives have not yet found a way to archive the content of database driven sites, these sites will also be absent from a whole domain archive.
The only example of this type of archive that is available to us to assess is the Internet Archive. An evaluation of it has shown that it has quite major limitations in terms of its completeness, among other things.
Whole domain archives still have major drawbacks from the point of view of resource discovery and access, although it is possible that these problems will be resolved in time. The Nordic Web Archive is doing good work in the area of automatic description and indexing. The Swedish National Library has made a major gain in the area of access through Ministerial support and a government directive that permits on-site access to freely available sites for research purposes.
6. Archiving based on collaborative agreements with publishers
The National Library of the Netherlands is the only exponent of this approach to date. It has responded to a particular situation, being located in a country where 30 per cent of all scientific publication in the world occurs. It takes in large volumes of online publications from a very small number of publishers, Elsevier being the primary partner. In this situation, technical infrastructure (developed by IBM) and organisational arrangements are put in place to cater to the requirements of a few publishers to the exclusion of all others. While between five and six terabytes of data have been ingested and stored, the Netherlands has yet to address the freely available material on the web.
The National Library of Australia recognises the value of working in close collaboration with commercial publishers and has devised a draft Code of Practice with the Australian Publishers Association. Although on a much smaller scale than in the Netherlands, this is expected to lead to special arrangements with some commercial publishers for the preservation of and access to commercial publications.
7. Does the National Library of Australia’s current selective approach remain valid?
The selective approach to archiving, despite the disadvantages outlined in Section 4, has served the Library well to date and remains the most viable approach, given the resource constraints and the Library’s requirement for an archive of high quality online publications processed in a way that ensures they are discoverable, accessible and functional for current and future researchers.
Although there is reason to be pleased with what we have achieved so far, we know that there is much online information being produced in Australia that neither the Library nor anyone else is collecting and it remains at risk of loss. Ideally the Library would like to extend the scope of its collecting to preserve more of this information for the future, or to work with others willing to do so in the context of ‘trusted partner’ relationships.
A review of the current content and scope of PANDORA compared to the range of potentially eligible online information resources being published in Australia has revealed a number of issues that need to be addressed in some way.
These databases contain information that would be of long-term value for researchers. There is reason to be concerned about the future availability of some of this data. While ABS takes periodic snapshots of its database and stores it on CD-ROM, there is apparently only a limited preservation plan for some of the geo-spatial data and none for the Hitwise database. Hitwise considers its data to have a valuable life of around 12 months.
In the online environment, does the Library need to think more broadly than the concept of a ‘publication’? Do we, in fact, have a broader role to collect useful information, whether or not it is structured in the form of a publication?
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Recommendation 1. It is recommended that the selective approach to archiving should continue as the core focus of the collecting activity for Australian online publications. |
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Recommendation 2. It is recommended that the Library should continue to monitor closely developments with the whole domain harvesting approach to assess the feasibility of adopting this at some time in the future. |
8. The National Library of Australia’s current selection guidelines
The current selective archiving policy has enabled the Library to build an archive of 3,400 titles, both static and dynamic.
According to the current selection guidelines, authoritative publications with long-term research value, including scholarly online publications and Commonwealth publications are collected as comprehensively as resources permit.
Those that are not considered to have research value in their own right, but to have value as examples of types of publications are collected on a sample basis to document Australian society as it is represented on the Internet. Some social and topical issues are identified for more intensive collecting, for example, elections and important events such as the Sydney Olympics.
Where there are both online and print versions of a publication available, the print version only is acquired.
The Library does not attempt to preserve all versions/editions of dynamic sites but sets a manageable gathering schedule for each title.
The Library relies on the State libraries for the collection and preservation of State and local government publications, publications of State-based organisations and publications containing information that is specific to a State or region.
Only links that are internal to a publication are archived.
The publication must have Australian content as defined in paragraph 4.1 of the guidelines, which in essence is the same as that for print publications.
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4.1.1 To be selected for national preservation, a significant proportion of a work should
4.1.2 It may be located on either an Australian or an overseas server. Australian authorship or editorship alone is insufficient grounds for national preservation. In the case of online publications, content is the pre-eminent factor determining selection. |
9. Definition of ‘publication’
In paragraph 3.3 of the current selection guidelines ‘publication’ is defined as anything publicly available on the Internet. The blurred distinctions between traditional categories of documents such as books, serials, manuscripts, working draft and organisational records is noted, and the intention not to archive organisational records and similar materials, which are the domain of archives and records management, is stated.
It has become no easier since 1996 to define ‘publication’ in the online environment. Our best attempt yet was included in the brochure Keeping Government Publications Online: A Guide for Commonwealth Agencies, July 2002. See Appendix A for this definition, which is tailored to the government sector. A version of this definition that would be applicable in general follows. This definition may need to be modified in the light of the outcomes of this review process.
A publication is information, regardless of its format or method of delivery, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free of charge or for a fee. In theory this includes everything publicly available via the Internet. In practice the National Library of Australia will selectively collect only certain types of nationally significant Australian online publications without print equivalents, including both those that are free of charge and those for which there is a fee for access. The Library will generally not archive in PANDORA organisational records and other materials made available via intranets. Categories of publications from which the Library will select in accordance with the selection guidelines include but are not limited to:
In the online world the boundaries of a publication are often not as clear-cut as they are in print. In some cases, particularly when part of a web site is being selected for archiving, the selection decision defines what the publication is in the context of the Archive, the extent of it, the ‘title’ for the purposes of bibliographic description and archiving.
The Library is collecting only a small fraction of eligible publications. We believe that we are doing reasonably well with e-journals, especially academic e-journals, and substantial literary works. While we are selecting and archiving quite a lot of conference proceedings and substantial reports, papers and speeches, there are a lot more that we are not identifying. We are archiving few annual reports and, for technical reasons, are archiving few maps and no databases.
PART B
CATEGORIES OF ONLINE PUBLICATIONS AND ISSUES RELATED TO COLLECTING THEM
10. What are the gaps in collecting online Australian publications?
Part B of this paper discusses categories of online information either not currently being collected or being collected but requiring a change of collecting scope, method or policy.
Each of the following categories is examined under the following framework:
10.1 Government publications
The National Library accepts primary responsibility for archiving and preservation of Commonwealth publications. Now that collecting agreements are in place with each of the State libraries and the Northern Territory Library, the National Library generally does not archive State or local government publications and expects the partner libraries to collect those relevant to their jurisdiction. The State Library of Tasmania has a strong focus on collecting and preserving State government publications through Our Digital Island and the Stable Tasmania Open Repository Service (STORS). The State Library of NSW is focusing on government publications in selecting titles for PANDORA. At this stage only a very small proportion of the government publications of the other States and Territories are being archived in PANDORA.
The scale of the task for PANDORA partners is large. The NSW Department of Agriculture alone publishes approximately 2400 new titles each year. (These are the ones that the departmental library identifies. There may be more.) This publishing output represents three times the volume of new titles that the National Library’s Electronic Unit was able to archive in 2001-02. While a proportion of the 2400 titles would have print equivalents, establishing which do and which do not is in itself a time consuming and sometimes an inconclusive task. Small print runs can make it difficult to acquire a print copy.
In adhering to a policy of archiving online only publications, staff need to spend a certain amount of time in establishing whether or not a print equivalent exists and, as mentioned above, this is not always easy to do. In practice, a pragmatic approach is taken. Sometimes it is quicker to archive an important publication than to establish whether or not it is in print.
The National Library intends to archive Commonwealth publications comprehensively. The Government Online directive of June 2000 has meant that all new Commonwealth government publications should be published online, irrespective of what other formats may also be used. It can be argued, therefore, that the online version is now the primary format for Commonwealth publications.
A trial conducted by the Electronic and Government Deposit Units April to June this year confirmed that the vast majority of print publications now also have online equivalents.
The purpose of the trial was to test the feasibility of archiving all Commonwealth online publications, whether or not they have a print equivalent. While the working group conducting the trial concluded this would be a highly desirable course of action, it was reluctantly forced to conclude that the required staff resources are not available. Because so many Commonwealth publications have both print and online versions, it would be a significant addition to the workload.
Because ascertaining which Commonwealth publications are in print and which are online only leads to duplication of effort for the Government Deposit and Electronic Units and given the fact that the online format is now the primary format for Commonwealth publications, consideration has been given to collecting only the online version and not the print, especially when legal deposit is extended to online publications. This would
This question was discussed at a meeting of Technical Services and Document Supply staff in October. Overall, the decision of the meeting was that it is premature to cease collecting print version of Commonwealth publications.
One of the main reasons the Library elected in 1996 to collect the print version of a publication rather than the online version, is that we had concerns about our ability to preserve online formats indefinitely, whereas we know that we can preserve print. Since then our confidence that there will be preservation paths for html text and print like formats such as pdf have increased considerably.
It is clear that a more efficient method of identifying, selecting, archiving and describing government publications is required for all PANDORA partners. With the explosion of government publishing online, the current labour-intensive approach is no longer equal to the task. If the Library does not move forward and find new solutions to archiving government publications, a significant amount of government information available only online will be lost. It is unlikely that any single solution will do in all situations. We need to be able to draw on a variety of solutions appropriate to the organisational environment of particular agencies and the technical characteristics of their web sites.
As well as the volume to be dealt with, there are also technical obstacles to identifying and collecting government publications. Another aspect of collecting government sites that needs attention is how to identify and gather publications from web sites that are structured as databases. The Australian National Audit Office, the Australian Taxation Office, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and the NSW Department of Agriculture are examples of such sites that are structured as databases.
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Recommendation 3. In order to find solutions for the more efficient archiving of government publications, and in order to be able to apply a variety of approaches according to the needs of a given situation, it is recommended that the Library investigate the feasibility of two broad strategies:
These two strategies overlap to a certain extent in that both depend on agencies making their metadata readily accessible. The second strategy is already underway, with seven agencies having signalled interest in working with the Library. The results of this research and any functionality developed should be shared with partner libraries to enable them to significantly improve coverage of State and Territory publications. |
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Recommendation 4. Now that all the mainland State libraries and the Northern Territory Library are PANDORA partners and the State Library of Tasmania has effective processes in place for collecting and managing its government publications, it is recommended that the National Library should, in general, take responsibility for collecting Commonwealth publications only. This decision should be formally conveyed to the partner libraries, stressing that if they do not collect government publications relating to their jurisdictions, they will be lost. The National Library would continue to notify the relevant partner library when it becomes aware of eligible State, Territory or local government publications. |
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Gaps in archiving Commonwealth government publications
NOTE: Gaps for State and local government publications are large, except for Tasmania and New South Wales. Technical constraints Some government sites are technically very complex and it can be difficult to identify what is on these sites, to navigate around them, to access publications and to archive them. Some government sites are quite straightforward and once a title is identified, there are few constraints in archiving it. Many government publications are print-like publications that present few problems. There are some government publications structured as databases and these cannot be dealt with at this stage (See Section 10.8) Technical and organisational solutions are required for automatic or semi-automatic identification, selection, description and gathering of government publications so that the large volume can be managed. Approaches to increasing the level of collecting There are two main approaches that could be explored to increase the level of collecting.
Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Because of the variety of approaches to publishing in the government sector, we need to be flexible in the way we deal with agencies. Having a few different strategies that we can offer to agencies for getting their publications into the Archive will increase our chances of success.
With the experience that the Library has already gained in harvesting metadata, it is possible to explore the feasibility of using this approach to automate or semi-automate the collecting of online government publications and what the obstacles requiring solution might be. It is proposed to run a small trial to:
TIME FRAME: For a small trial - first quarter of 2003. If this approach shows any promise, a CITG proposal would then be developed and submitted for scheduling.
Roxanne Missingham has already set in train a pilot and five Commonwealth agencies have indicated willingness to work with the Library. A number of different models could be developed to cater for the approaches of different agencies and their libraries. If we can set up effective working best practice models, the expectation is that we could make it easier to persuade other agencies to work with us in this way. TIME FRAME: Report on feasibility of this approach by end of 2003. Quantify resource implications
Initially, the small trial would involve staff time from Tony Boston, Margaret Phillips and Paul Koerbin. Should this approach show any promise, a larger project would need to be scoped and the required resources specified in a CITG proposal. 2. Working closely with individual agencies, find efficient workflows to obtain information about their publications Digital Archiving, Kinetica and IT staff would need to be involved in this project. |
Providing access to publications archived by automatic or semi-automatic means would raise one issue, as the Library would not have negotiated permission to archive. This problem should be solved when legal deposit provisions are extended to online publications. As amendments to legal deposit legislation are possibly still 12-18 months away, the Library could make good use of this time by finding a technical solution to automatic or semi-automatic collecting.
In the mean time, this approach could be used with those agencies with whom the Commonwealth Copyright Administration has negotiated blanket permission of the Library’s behalf.
10.2 Australian web domain snapshot or part thereof
The Library recognises the potential advantages of periodic domain snapshots as a supplement to selective archiving and has been examining the feasibility of a periodic domain snapshot to supplement the selective archive.
In 2001, the Library engaged a consultant, Wei Lei, to undertake a feasibility study into Australian web domain harvesting. This study (see NLA9832-5) was useful in highlighting a number of issues and risks (including legal, technical and financial risks) that need to be addressed in undertaking a project of this sort in the Australian context. The resources that would have been required to address the identified issues and to take the task forward were not available, and no further progress has been made on the matter.
The study by Wei Lei considered two main approaches to an Australian domain snapshot:
The first approach would have required development of the work that Wei Lei commenced with dedicated IT expertise, which was not available at the time.
In November 2002 a very rough estimate of the cost of downloading a snapshot of the entire Australian domain was $202,000. This does not include the cost of IT staff to configure a harvester, oversee the harvesting, organise, document, or store the files.
The second approach would require cooperation with the Internet Archive, and we have continued to keep this option open. One of the inhibiting factors for this approach has been our assessment that the standard of archiving that the Internet Archive manages to achieve falls well short of what the Library would find satisfactory. Many publications are incomplete and do not contain component files. There are also problems with the dates of publications in the Archive and how these are represented, which leads to concerns about authenticity of documents.
In 2002 the Internet Archive outlined a proposal to form a consortium of national libraries to explore the issues relating to the development of national online collections. One of the objectives of the consortium would be to define the requirements of national libraries for online heritage collections. It is then proposed to develop software that would enable these collections to be built. It is possible that these strategies would result in collections of higher quality than the Internet Archive has been able to achieve to date.
The cost of participating in the Internet Archive consortium is much too high for the Library to be able to afford. There has been a cautious response from most of the other libraries approached to join the consortium and at this stage it appears that the consortium may not proceed. The Library has replied indicating that it cannot contribute financially but would like to be involved in discussion and developments of specifications.
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Recommendation 5. While it is recognised that periodic snapshots of the entire Australia domain would complement the existing selective Archive and might have long-term research value, the cost of engaging in this activity, either alone or in conjunction with the Internet Archive, is beyond the Library’s current means. It is recommended that no action be taken on a snapshot at present, but that a watching brief be maintained on the work of agencies that are collecting in this way with a view to re-considering this decision should funding, legal and technological circumstances change. |
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The Library is currently collecting only a tiny proportion of the Australian web domain. There is undoubtedly material being missed that would be of interest to researchers in the future and the current selective approach denies researchers the opportunity to examine the full phenomenon of the Australian web as it appears at a given time. The Internet Archive, which started archiving the whole web in 1996, has gathered portions of the Australian domain, though individual publications have not been archived to a satisfactory degree of completeness. A link to the Internet Archive from the PANDORA Home Page has been implemented. Technical constraints Archiving an entire web domain is complicated technically. Countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland have been working for some years to perfect the means of doing it. The Library does not have the techniques, though Wei Lei started to investigate them on our behalf. Strategies for testing or implementing approaches Not recommended to proceed at this stage. Quantify resource implications The resources involved to develop technical infrastructure and capability would be large and beyond the Library’s means a this stage. Downloading and storage costs would be much higher than those currently encountered with selective archiving.
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10.3 Commercial publications
The Archive already contains approximately 90 commercial publications, mostly published by non-mainstream publishers. There is as yet very little online only publishing by traditional book publishers being undertaken in Australia. However, it is desirable that the Library be ready to deal with them, especially as we remain optimistic that legal deposit provisions will be extended to electronic publications within the next 12-18 months.
While publishers such as McGraw Hill, Jacaranda Wiley, and Heinemann Rigby have web sites, they are used primarily for the promotion and sale of print publications. Sometimes supplementary material or updates are provided online. This material is likely to be incorporated into later editions of the print version.
Legal publishers such as Butterworths and CCH Australia are also using the web including, apparently, for a few online only publications.
Pam Gatenby has succeed in developing with the Australian Publishers Association (APA) a Code of Practice that defines an agreed set of responsibilities and conditions that will apply to commercial publications, and takes into account the commercial interests of publishers and balances these with the preservation and access objectives of the Library. While APA has agreed to the Code in principle, it wants it to be tested before it publicly accepts it. It is planned to undertake this test during 2003.
From the Library’s point of view, one of the main objectives of the test will be to gain the confidence of publishers by demonstrating to them that the Library can manage commercial publications securely and not jeopardise publishers’ financial interests. We need to ascertain what publishers want of the arrangement, apart from security, for example, statistics on usage.
There are already publications of 19 APA members in the PANDORA Archive. In addition, a sample of the sites of 15 publishers has been archived to form the collection, Publishers, Sept-Dec 2000 – Australian Internet sites. These include Lonely Planet Online, Melbourne University Press, Penguin Books (Australia) and Harper Collins.
The Library is in a good position to be able to sort any issues out before the volume of this material becomes large.
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Recommendation 6. It is recommended that on completion of the BSC Initiative relating to the Code of Practice, a strategy and guidelines for the routine reporting of commercial publications by its members be developed with the Australian Publishers Association. |
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Gaps There is still little mainstream commercial publishing in Australia. However, there are some publications that we are not archiving owing to technical considerations or because of publisher concerns about control over their commercial interests. Publishers still need to be convinced of the value of allowing us to archive their publications and that they can trust us. Technical constraints Technical issues will vary from publisher to publisher and even from publication to publication. Access to commercial publications is usually inhibited by devices such as passwords. This will need to be resolved for archiving to take place, probably by the publisher sending files to us. Publications such as Australian Business Who’s Who are structured as databases, which means that we have not had the technical capacity to archive them. This may change as a result of the CITG approved project to explore ways of dealing with databases. There may also be some technical needs to be addressed in the area of publishers requiring usage statistics. Approaches to increase level of collecting Undertake a trial with a commercial publisher to demonstrate the effectiveness of digital archive management system and build trust. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Work with a commercial publisher to define the parameters of the trial and carry it out. TIME FRAME: Stage trial from March to September 2003 and report on outcome by end July 2003. Quantify resource implications Difficult to quantify until the trial is defined with the publisher, but it is likely to involve both Digital Archiving and IT staff. |
The issue of Australian maps in digital form is a large and unresolved one. The Maps Section and the Electronic Unit have been cooperating to identify and, where possible, to archive maps that are freely available on the web. An impediment to archiving has been the fact that many maps are structured as databases, which to date we are not able to archive. However, the research project scheduled for the first part of this calendar year (Section 10.8) may provide a way forward.
The other category of map material that is causing even more concern is the data gathered by the mapping agencies such as GeoScience Australia, the Defence Department and the various State Lands departments. Local councils are also mapping for their own purposes, such as road building. The data gathered by these agencies was once printed and deposited with the Library. Now it is kept in databases and typically provided in customised form on request and payment of a fee.
Elements of this data is regularly published and deposited with the Library on CD-ROM.
The lack of apparent long-term preservation strategies for this digital material within both government agencies and private industry (to which some of this activity is outsourced) is a critical problem and threatens loss of information that is essential to the economy, environment and security of Australia. It needs to be addressed in a concerted way at a national level by all parties with responsibilities for the creation and preservation of geo-spatial data.
The Library still has an interest in the fate of the nation’s geo-spatial data, especially that portion of it that is published. The large geo-spatial datasets are beyond the capacity of PANDORA to deal with at this stage, even if it were appropriate to include them. In accordance with its collaborative approach to archiving and preserving Australian digital resources, the Library needs to work with the other parties in this sector towards a distributed archive for Australia’s geo-spatial data in digital form.
The current practice of identification of online maps by the Maps Section and archiving (where technical capability permits) by the Electronic Unit should continue. The database project should include a map among the resources for which it attempts to find a solution.
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Recommendation 7. It is recommended that the current practice of identification of online maps by the Maps Section and archiving (where technical capability permits) by the Electronic Unit should continue. This does not include the datasets of mapping agencies, the output of which needs to be addressed collaboratively at a national level by all parties with responsibilities for the creation and preservation of geo-spatial data. The database project (Section 10.8) should include a map among the resources for which it attempts to find a solution. |
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Gaps At this stage there is no concerted plan for ensuring long-term access to Australia’s geospatial data in digital form that is being collected by agencies such as GeoScience Australia, the Defence Department, the various State Lands departments and local councils . ThIs data is stored in databases not available to web harvesting robots and is well beyond the capacity of the Electronic Unit and PANDORA to deal with. The Maps Section has identified some maps available on the web for archiving, but many of these are in the form of databases and are not yet able to be archived. Technical constraints Map data is frequently stored in databases. Even apparently simple maps are structured in this way. As yet there is no solution for archiving and providing access to this material. Approaches to increased level of archiving The database research project (10.8) may enable us to find a solution for taking in and providing access to single maps that are available on the web. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Use a map as one example of a database to be explored in the database research project. TIME FRAME: Dependent on Database Research Project Quantify resource implications See 11.9 |
10.5 Music
Original Australian music compositions are just beginning to appear on the web and one Australian music publisher has requested a batch of ISMNs to self-allocate to music he is publishing on the web.
The current selection guidelines do not include music, although some sites containing notated music have been archived.
For creative literature the guidelines specify that the Library will archive only substantial works or collections of short stories or poems. We will generally not archive single poems or short stories.
Print music, especially popular music, jazz, etc, tends to be published as single items initially, and this is also the approach with this early web music. For this reason music will need to be treated differently from other creative works.
Discussion between the Music Unit and the Electronic Unit has resulted in the following proposed selection guidelines for Australian music:
‘Australian composer’ includes one who was born and has resided in Australia or has continued to be recognised as Australian although residence in Australia has not been continuous, or one who, although not born in Australia, has been identified through work and residence in Australia as an Australian.
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Recommendation 8. It is recommended that music be selected and archived according to the proposed guidelines. |
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Gaps While the Archive contains a few sites that include notated music, usually folk or traditional music, the Archive contains no scores of original compositions. The first known Australian examples have recently been drawn to our attention by the ISMN Agency Technical constraints Not scoped at this stage. In some cases special file formats or software may be involved, together with sound files. Approaches to increase level of collecting The Electronic Unit will select and archive appropriate sites as they are identified. The volume of original music publishing on the web is very low at this stage. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approach Implement selection guidelines. ISMN agency to advise Electronic Unit of web publications being assigned ISMN. TIME FRAME: Ongoing from now. Quantify resource implications Resource implications are likely to be small during the next 12 months because of the low volume of publishing. |
10.6 Adult sites
In 1999 the Library made a decision to add a sample of adult sites to the archive and sought legal advice on the best way to proceed. The recent media attention has not deterred us from this decision, and the Electronic Unit plans to undertake this work in the first half of 2003.
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Recommendation 9. It is recommended that adult sites become one of the identified topical categories for sampling that will be revisited every three years. |
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Gaps To date there are no adult sites in the archive. Technical constraints There may be some obstacles in relation to gaining access to sites and harvesting the files. Some sites may use sophisticated software. Approaches to increase level of collecting Develop policy and guidelines for selecting, archiving and managing Adult sites. A sample of approximately 20 sites will be selected and archived. This category of material will be revisited every three years. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approach TIME FRAME: Aim to complete the task or archiving 20 sites by end of June 2003 Quantify resource implications All Electronic Unit staff will be involved |
10.7 E-prints
With impetus from the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) to develop research information infrastructure framework for Australian Higher Education, the development of university e-print archives have started to receive attention in Australia. The DEST Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee identified e-Print archives as an important area for funding. The ANU was asked to arrange for the development of a specification and a focus group was set up to comment on the draft. The National Library has been represented on both of these bodies, by David Toll and Debbie Campbell respectively.
The likely model for e-print archives in Australia is that each university would develop its own e-print archive, with a single national resource discovery entry point, which the National Library would have a role in supporting.
While Debbie Campbell has flagged the issue of preservation with the focus group, it has not yet been dealt with comprehensively by the universities. The first concern is to get the individual archives up and running. Universities may decide to ensure long-term access, or they could individually or as a group turn to the National Library for assistance.
Implications for the Library
This development provides the Library with the opportunity to collaborate with the academic sector in collecting, providing access to and preserving Australian online academic publications and e-prints. Depending on how the situation develops, the universities may want to operate independently and undertake all of this themselves. The Library would be in a position to provide guidance in long-term access issues.
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Gaps The Library has not been able to identify or archive much of the material that will appear in the E-print archives. However, there is likely to be a little bit of overlap with PANDORA. Some conference papers, journal articles, research papers, etc, that the Library has archived as part of large publications will probably also be lodged in E-print archives as single items. Technical constraints Not applicable Approaches to increase level of collecting Not applicable Strategy for testing or implementing identified approach Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not applicable |
10.8 Databases and the ‘deep web’
Almost all of the content of the PANDORA Archive to date is from the ‘surface web’, the part of the web generally available to search engines and harvesters. The ‘deep web’ is that part of the web that is not accessible to search engines and harvest robots and consists mainly of sources that store their content in searchable databases that produce information dynamically as a result of a human-generated request.
One study5 published in the Journal of Electronic Publishing estimated that public information alone in the deep web is 400 to 550 times larger than in the surface web. The study claims that the deep web is the fastest growing category of new information on the Internet.
An Australian source on this subject6 lists a number of sites, both freely available and fee-based, that are components of the Australian deep web. Examples given include the National Library’s catalogue, PictureAustralia, Australian Libraries Gateway and the AustLit database, none of which at this point in time we would think should be archived in PANDORA. However, there is a lot of information in the deep web that has long-term research value and could be included in PANDORA.
The Library has selected a growing number of publications for archiving that are structured as databases. Current methods of archiving, either using the harvester or receiving files via ftp or on physical media, do not deal adequately with database sites. However, an increasing number are being produced in this format and there is the potential for important content to be lost.
The need for a technical solution to this problem has been identified and a paper submitted to Corporate Information Technology Group (CITG). Work to develop a solution is scheduled to commence in the first half of 2003.
For a copy of the proposal see J:\Corporate IT Group\2002 Meetings\12 April meeting\proposal-pandora.doc
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Gaps It has not been possible to archive any publications structured as databases to date. This includes a number of maps identified for archiving, some important government publications, and commercial publications such as Australian Business Who’s Who. Technical constraints The available harvesting technology is unable to access the content of sites structured as databases, as it depends on being able to follow hypertext links, and databases require human intelligence using software to interact with the data. It would be possible for publishers to send the data to the Library on disks or via ftp, but then the user interface is lacking. There are licensing issues involved in the software that supports the database and the search interface. Even if the software for access were available to the Library now, this will change over time, rendering the data inaccessible. Approaches to increase level of collecting The need for a solution has been identified and a proposal put forward to CITG. Publications investigated should include at least one map. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches A research project is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2003. Quantify resource implications The resource requirements of the small trial have been estimated at 10-15 days of IT time at an estimate cost of $4,837, assuming that the generic application generator can be used. Otherwise more time would be required. Until this trial has been conducted and we learn what is involved, we do not know the resources implications for archiving this category of material on an on-going basis. |
10.9 Datasets
The web has provided a burgeoning environment for the aggregation and dissemination of information, which is no longer necessarily packaged in the form of a publication. In the course of research and business activity, individuals and companies around Australia are building databases of information on a wide variety of topics. A proportion of this data would be of value to future researchers and much of it is likely to be at risk of loss once the immediate use for it passes. It is not the kind of information that has been traditionally collected by libraries. Traditionally, a small amount of this information may have been kept by universities, business archives and government archives, but a lot of it will have been lost.
In the pre-digital world, this type of data may have ended up in business or university archives, but more often was probably lost. It cannot be defined as a ‘publication’ and we could not argue that in the future it should be deposited with us under extended legal deposit provisions. It is a new category of information that the Library may wish to consider collecting.
Much of this information is now contained in databases on the ‘deep web’. It is well beyond the scope of the Library at this point to collect and preserve this kind of information systematically.
What approach to this category of information should the Library take? Outside our scope for collecting in the analogue environment, should we continue to disregard it? Or, recognising that there is a lot of material of long-term research value that is likely to be lost, should the Library take in interest in it? In the online world, should libraries extend their scope beyond the concept of ‘publication’? Should the value of the information for research purposes be the primary criterion for selection, rather than the format in which it comes?
Just as an expanded role for libraries could be argued, so could an expanded role for archives. At the moment, as far as we can tell, no one is proposing to care for this type of data. Should we be open to opportunities to acquire examples of datasets of particular research value to our researchers, or should the Library advocate some alternative strategy for collection and preservation of this material?
An example before us at the moment is the data compiled by Hitwise, a company that monitors usage of Australian (and some overseas) web sites. The Library is interested in subscribing to this service as a customer, for information about how our own web site is being used and by whom. To provide this service, Hitwise is accumulating a large amount of information about Australian web sites and their usage, which is likely to be of interest to future researchers. The Hitwise representative with whom we have been dealing is willing to consider making the dataset available to the Library as part of the package, though this may involve some additional cost.
In practice, the Library is not in a position to do much about datasets until it finds a solution for managing such data through the databases project scheduled through CITG.
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Recommendation 10. Because of other, higher priorities at this stage together with a lack of technical capability, it is recommended that the Library not proceed to archive datasets for the present. However, because of the high research value of some of the information in this category, the Library may want to consider its position in relation to online information of this type, with a view either to collecting it when resources and technical capability permit, or encouraging its retention and preservation by some other sector. |
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Gaps The Library has not collected this kind of digital material to date and it is likely that no one else in Australia is either. Potentially, a lot of valuable research information is being lost. Technical constraints Some of these datasets could be quite large. There could be some quite challenging technical issues around making the data accessible. There could be issues in common with databases and some of these may be resolved by the database research project (Section 10.8) Approaches to increase level of collecting Given other, higher priorities, this category should not be collected at this stage, though the Library should consider its position in relation to this type of online information for possible collection when resources and technical capability permit. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approach Not applicable. Quantify resource implications Not applicable. |
10.10 Online daily newspapers
To date, very few online only newspapers have been identified and archived. The selection guidelines require that selected titles should have quality, authority and originality of content (i.e., should not duplicate material published in print). Those selected are more like news magazines and bulletins than newspapers and most have lasted less than 18 months, having difficulty in attracting funding or subscription. The Australian Observer, ‘Australia’s first newspaper magazine’ was already defunct by 1996. The AustralAsian lasted from January 1999 to May 2000, and the Zeitgeist Gazette ran from August 1999 to March 2000. The New Australian is a right wing magazine that began in 1997 and is still going. Reportage is a ‘web magazine dedicated to high quality independent journalism’ produced by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism which began in print in 1993 and by 2000 had moved to online only when the Library began to archive it.
Few of these titles are daily. New editions of the Zeitgeist Gazette were made available at 3.00 pm each day.
The current selection guidelines state in section 5.10.1 that sites for newspapers such as The Canberra Times, The Age, and the Sydney Morning Herald, which mainly duplicate the information provided in print, will not be selected for preservation.
A survey of academics by the National Library of Denmark7 found that they were very keen for newspaper web sites to be archived, not only daily but more frequently, if possible, to document the ever-changing nature of newspaper sites. Paul Livingston advises that in the USA the newspaper web sites and the print newspapers are staffed by a different team of journalists, leading to different content. This is not the case in Australia.
In Australia, The Australian is the only print newspaper that has an exact online equivalent, having introduced the online version, available on subscription, in August 2001. The web sites of newspapers such as The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Canberra Times and the Courier Mail, have the same stories as the print version, word for word, although the photographs are often not included in the web version. Occasionally, web versions include sound and/or video clips. While the web sites of some papers such as the Canberra Times and The Australian usually do not change much, if at all, during the day, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age usually do.
Notwithstanding the fact that the information on the sites of the major daily newspapers is substantially contained in the print editions of the papers, the web sites are a point of quick reference for news headlines, weather and sports results for Australians and have contributed to changing behaviours for keeping up with news. There would be some value in capturing this kind of information source to document the online news gathering experience and the way newspapers and their use are changing.
Contacts at the British Library and the Library of Congress report that neither of these organisations yet have solutions to newspaper archiving.
The question of the archiving and preservation of online newspapers is closely tied in with the NPLAN, which is currently being reconsidered. Of the newspapers that the Library accepts responsibility for under the NPLAN, the following have a web presence
Colin Webb has reported that the State libraries have commented that taking responsibility for online versions of the titles for which they are responsible is not possible because of the resources required.
Since a number of the major dailies are published by two big companies, News Limited and Fairfax, rather than having each library negotiate individually on a State by State basis, it may make more sense to negotiate collectively with the companies. This could perhaps be undertaken either by CASL or by the National Library on behalf of PANDORA partners.
Archiving newspaper sites is daunting because of the number of them, the size of them and the fact that they come out everyday, and in some cases change during the day.
While it is not essential to archive these newspapers from the content point of view (all available in print), it would be desirable to archive the artefact, to document the news gathering experience of many Australians who use these sites as a source for news and particularly to record how they change over time.
In order to test the feasibility of this in a small and manageable way, the Library could take the Canberra Times as an example. The aim would be to explore the issues associated with newspaper archiving. Does the Canberra Times itself keep an archive? If so, what form is it in and what are its long-term plans for preservation? Does it keep just articles, or does it also keep the structure and appearance of the web site? Is there any scope for ‘trusted partner’ arrangements? If the Canberra Times does not keep an archive, would it permit the Library to archive it?
If discussions with the Canberra Times indicated that it would be desirable for the Library to archive it, we could archive it perhaps once a quarter for a number of days in a row to document how changing news is dealt with.
However, given other, higher priorities at this stage, the Library could not embark on such a project in the immediate future, but it could be considered for the financial year 2004-05
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Recommendation 11. Given other, higher priorities at this stage, it is recommended that the Library not embark on a project to archive daily online newspapers in the immediate future. However, the position could be reconsidered for the financial year 2004-05. |
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Gaps With the exception of a few small experimental online only newspapers, this category has not been collected to date. Technical constraints The size of sites and the time taken to download may put some strain on the system. A trial gathering indicated that the size of the Canberra Times site is around 300 megabytes and the time taken to archive it would be approximately 12 ½ hours. Approaches to increase level of collecting Given other, higher priorities, this category should not be collected at this stage, though the position should be reconsidered in the financial year 2004-05. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not applicable |
10.11 News sites
In addition to the web sites of newspapers, news is also available on other sites:
Australian news sites have usually been archived in PANDORA only for specific collections, such as the Sydney 2000 Olympic Collection and Federal and State Elections Collections. Australian news web sites have otherwise not been actively selected mainly because the actual content is well covered by Australian printed newspapers.
ScreenSound Australia collects a representative sample of local and national nightly news broadcasts and current affairs programs from cable, metropolitan and regional television stations.
The main value of including news sites in the archive would be, as for newspaper web sites, to document one of the ways in which Australians at this point in time obtain their news.
The Electronic Unit has identified and evaluated 35 news sites and 13 are considered to be worthwhile additions to the archive. To be of value, these sites would need to be gathered on a recurrent basis, though not necessarily a daily basis. Once a year each day for seven days would give a snapshot of the sites and how they handle changing news. ScreenSound Australia could be requested to take responsibility for the television and radio sites. However, given other, higher priorities at the moment it is recommended that the Library not proceed to archive this category at this stage. The position could be reconsidered, together with newspaper sites, in the financial year 2004-05
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Recommendation 12. Given other, higher priorities at this stage, it is recommended that the Library not embark on a project to archive news sites in the immediate future. However, the position could be reconsidered for the financial year 2004-05. |
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Gaps Except for parts of new sites that have been archived as components of topic collections (e.g., the Sydney Olympics) news sites have not been archived. Technical constraints The sites will tend to be larger than average. Technical constraints may differ from site to site. Approaches to increase level of collecting Given other, higher priorities, this category should not be collected at this stage, though the position should be reconsidered in the financial year 2004-05. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not applicable. |
10.12 Discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups
The current selection guidelines state at 1.8 that, among other types of online resources, discussion lists, bulletin boards and news groups ‘have not been considered at this stage’. It is now time to consider this type of material.
The selections guidelines have always been just that – guidelines - and the Electronic Unit collects outside the guidelines when there is good reason. In fact, one discussion list has already been archived – Left Link, which operated 1999-2000. Another discussion list has been selected for archiving. In 2000 the Electronic Unit was approached by the owner of Pamela’s List and asked to archive it. It agreed to, but negotiations stalled and it needs to be followed up. This is an email list for representatives of national women's organisations, which has historical and research purposes.
The material in this category in some ways is closer to telephone conversations, email correspondence or organisational records than to the traditional concept of a ‘publication’. However, some of these resources are likely to have long-term research value.
Birgit Henriksen from the National Library of Denmark has reported on a survey of academics who expressed a strong desire to have chat rooms and bulletin boards archived, not only for the subject content, but also because they see language evolving in these forums8.
The National Library of Canada includes them in its selection guidelines for online publications9 stating that it will select ‘public communications (i.e. bulletin board systems used to support chat groups; e-mail communication between groups and individuals, including discussion groups and listservs) on a selective basis’. The criteria for selection are fairly restrictive, however, requiring, among other things, that the National Library is a participant/subscriber and that the topics relate to its areas of interest of library and information science.
Discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups are phenomena of the web and are part of the Australian domain and the experience of using it. They document the interests and concerns of Australians using the web. It would be desirable to have some examples of this kind of publication in the collection. However, at this point in time, given other priorities, it is not considered possible to add discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups.
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Recommendation 13. At this point in time, given other priorities, it is not considered possible to add discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups to the Archive. It is therefore recommend that this category of online resource should not be collected at this stage. |
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Gaps Very little deliberate collecting of discussions lists, chat rooms, news groups and bulletin boards has taken place to date, although an instance of at least one chat room has been captured incidently as part of a web site. Technical Constraints Some discussion lists may be difficult to archive, depending on the way they are structured, and especially if messages are accessed through script-based links. The size of some sites may also pose challenges. Other constraints An issue associated with this type of online information is privacy. Although codes names are often used when contributing to chat rooms and bulletin boards, there may be concerns for hosts and participants in relation to privacy. Contributors to discussion lists would usually identify themselves fully. We would be depending on the host of the service to provide permission to archive on behalf of all contributors and to inform them that their contributions will be archived. For this category, we may need to consider a longer period of restriction with no access. The purpose for archiving would not be current but longer-term research. Approaches to increase level of collecting Given other, higher priorities, this category should not be collected at this stage. Strategy for testing and implementing identified approaches Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not applicable |
10.13 CAMS
CAMS are an interesting, fairly recent, web phenomenon, which is based on the installation of a camera or cameras at a particular location and the regular transmission of resulting photographs at periodic intervals (60 seconds or a few minutes) to a web site. One use of CAMS is the monitoring of beach conditions for surfers and there are a number of these installed, sometimes by the local tourist authority, at beaches anywhere from Broome in WA to the Bay of Fires in Tasmania. The Cable Beach, Broome CAM is a nice example. (http://www.broomecam.com/camera_details.htm) The visitor to the site can obtain a 360 degree view of the beach and environs and can zoom in and out on aspects of interest.
To the astonishment of those of us who value privacy, there are also personal CAMS, where individuals install cameras either in their office or in a number of rooms of their house and transmit the photographs to their personal web site. In association with this, some enter into email correspondence with viewers and put up other documents on their site including diaries and photographs.
For one of the more interesting examples of a personal CAM see http://www.thechookpen.com/thechookpen.html
This is another type of online resource that does not fall into the category of a publication but, nevertheless, a representative collection of them could have long-term research value. Ideally it would be desirable to have a small selection in the Archive. However, given other, higher priorities it is recommended that they not be selected for archiving at this stage.
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Recommendation 14. Ideally it would be desirable to have a small selection of CAMS in the Archive. However, given other, higher priorities it is recommended that they not be selected for archiving at this stage. |
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Gaps To date, there are no CAMS in the Archive. Technical constraints There may be technical constraints relating to file types and this may vary from CAM to CAM. Approaches to increased level of archiving Given other, higher priorities at this time CAMS will not be selected for archiving at this stage. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not applicable |
10.14 Blogs
Blogs (or Weblogs) are another new phenomenon on the web and are diary-like documents. They can be closely associated with CAMS as some people put Blogs on their CAMS. Many of these are trivial in content and are of no research interest, except as an example of the phenomenon itself.
However, some academics use Blogs as a way of keeping track of their research and letting others know what they are doing. A very interesting Australian example is at Grumpy Girl, (alias Meredith Badger) http://grumpygirl.blogspot.com/ who is doing a Masters research project at RMIT on Blogs. She has joint authored a major article on Blogs in academia. See http://www.intermedia.uio.no/konferanser/skikt-02/docs/Researching_ICTs_in_context-Ch11-Mortensen-Walker.pdf
While ideally it would be desirable to archive a range of blogs to illustrate the phenomenon, given the need to prioritise, it is recommended that the Library archive blogs only when they support the high priority category of academic publications.
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Recommendation 15. While ideally it would be desirable to archive a range of blogs to illustrate the phenomenon, given the need to prioritise, it is recommended that the Library archive blogs only when they support the high priority category of academic publications. |
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Gaps To date, there are no Blogs in the Archive. Technical constraints To be explored. Blogs depend on Blog software and there could be some technical hurdles. Approaches to increased level of archiving Select Blogs only when they are relevant to the high priority category of academic publications. Strategy for testing or implementing identified approaches Assuming there are no over-riding technical constraints, archive blogs as relevant examples are identified. TIME FRAME: Undertake on an ongoing basis as titles are identified Quantify resource implications Archiving these sites would be managed as part of ongoing Electronic Unit activity. |
10.15 Portals
The question of whether the Library should archive portals arises from time to time. The guidelines specifically exclude ‘sites that only serve the purpose of organising Internet information, e.g., Guide to Australia’, and portals fit into this category.
A few exceptions have been made to this general rule in the case of Commonwealth government portals that represented particular initiatives of government at the time, e.g., Online Australia and GovOnline.gov.au. Regional Australia Entry Point is about to be archived. These sites tend to have more internal content than portals in general. The external links are not archived.
There are two reasons for not archiving the typical portal. Firstly, the harvesting software is programmed to follow only links on the site of the entry point URL, at the level of that URL and below. Therefore it will not follow links to another site. Portals consist primarily of links to other sites. To override this characteristic of the harvester would require a large amount of work for Electronic Unit staff, as all of the additional URLs would have to be identified and input manually. To program the harvester to go beyond the confines of one site would mean potentially harvesting the entire web. How do you tell it where to stop?
Secondly, the Library only archives sites with the permission of publishers. To archive a portal it would be necessary to obtain permission from the rights owners of all the sites a portal links to. Again, this would be a large amount of work. In the past the Electronic Unit has gone through some of the major Australian portals to identify sites for archiving though this has not been particular productive work. Portals often point to individual papers and articles, which would not usually be archived in PANDORA. Individual sites that meet the guidelines have been archived. However, the relationship with the portal is not maintained in the Archive.
Many of the sites linked to by many portals are overseas sites and therefore are out of scope of PANDORA.
Recently, when one of the early Australian portals folded, it was suggested that we should at least archive the home page to record the way it looked. This comes downs to a question of priorities and the information value of archiving the home page is limited.
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Recommendation 16. For the reasons given, it is recommended that the existing policy of not archiving portals should continue. |
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Gaps No portal s have been archived Technical constraints The harvester is not able to harvest portals as it is programmed not to follow external links. Approaches to increase level of collecting Not recommended Strategy for testing or implementing identified approach Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not Applicable |
10.16 Games
To date the Library has collected no online games. While it would be nice to collect a few examples, we cannot manage to do so, given other priorities.
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Recommendation 17. It is recommended that the policy of not collecting online games should continue. |
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Gaps There are no games in the Archive. Technical constraints Some games could be quite complex to collect. Approaches to increase level of collecting Not recommended Strategy for testing or implementing identified approach Not applicable Quantify resource implications Not applicable |
PART C
PROPOSAL
11. Long-term strategy and short-term position
As mentioned in Part A of this paper, the Library’s strategic approach to archiving and preserving Australian resources in digital form is collaborative and, as well as the State and Territory libraries with which is has already established partnerships, it will seek to establish working relationships with other sectors such as the academic, government and commercial publishing sectors.
This is the longer-term national strategic focus. In the shorter-term, the other sectors are not yet sufficiently developed in their organisation or technical infrastructure to assume their part in this national distributed archive. In the meantime, the PANDORA partners, particularly the National Library, will do their best to select and archive the most important of the nation’s publications.
This means that in the short term (say, three to five years), until a national coordinated network of archives can be put in place, the Library and partners, by default, are left to do the best they can with a larger portion of the nation’s documentary heritage than we can comfortably manage.
12. Need to define collecting priorities
When the objectives for Balanced Score Card initiative 49 were originally framed, it was envisaged that the review of Australian online collecting would result in new categories of online publications being identified and that recommendations would be made for expanding collecting. This review has highlighted that there are types of resources we are not collecting at all as well as significant gaps in our collecting of some categories specified in our selection guidelines. Under combined circumstances of increased online publishing output in all the existing categories and staff reductions in Technical Services, extension of collecting scope is now not considered possible.
The current selection guidelines outline the categories of online publications that will be included in the Archive but they do not give much guidance in relation to collecting priorities. The volume of online publications that meet the guidelines is much greater than the existing staff of the Electronic Unit can manage.
The Electronic Unit staff could spend all of their time on Commonwealth government publications alone and still not archive all the online only publications of value. They could also spend a lot of time on conference proceedings without covering all the worthwhile publications from this sector.
At the current rate of acquisition, the Electronic Unit staff of 1 APS 6 and 3.7 APS 5s are adding new titles to the Archive at the rate of approximately 70010 per year. They are also processing about 1,000 re-gatherings of existing titles. The Electronic Unit staff are mindful of the fact that the more we regather titles, the fewer new titles we can take in and they set the regathering schedule at the widest possible interval, taking into account the characteristics of the publication. For instance, a monthly e-journal may be archived annually, in situations where the publisher keeps a full year of issues on the site.
Despite this careful management, the statistics show that the number of regathered titles is tending to increase relative to the number of new titles added to the Archive.
However you count the new titles, 700 per year or 1,500 (see footnote 10), given the staff available and the current technical capability, it is obvious that we are managing to archive a small fraction of the of the eligible publications with substantial research content.
Our current collection policy therefore needs to be reassessed.
13. Proposed inclusions
It has become necessary to prioritise collecting if we are to collect even a reasonable proportion of the nationally significant publications with long-term research value in their own right. It is therefore proposed that collecting should be focused on the following categories:
Equal weight will be given to each of these categories and further work will need to be done to develop more specific selection guidelines for each.
We will collect any site of a high standard with individual research value, regardless of subject, be it music, literature, juvenile, educational, personal home pages, etc. But we will give priority to the categories listed in recommendation 18. This means that some categories currently being collected, such as literature, juvenile sites, etc, will not be given priority but will be collected only as resources allow.
In the case of Commonwealth government publications, we hope that the proposed projects (outlined in Part B, 10.1) to explore ways of identifying, archiving and describing government publications automatically or semi-automatically would enable us, within about two years, to considerably extend collection of this category, either by the Library or collaboratively. In the mean time, we would need to define what realistically we can do.
One approach to Commonwealth government publications, for instance, would be to undertake to archive and preserve the publications of those agencies that actively cooperate with us, by participating in the Kinetica Commonwealth Government Metadata Work Group (seven agencies to date), by giving us blanket permission to archive their domains, or by notifying us of new publications. In other cases, we could undertake to archive publications at the portfolio level, but would be unable to identify and select publications of divisions, units, and associated bodies unless or until more automatic means of selecting and archiving are available to us.
Of course, where we become aware of high quality sites or substantial publications of other agencies we would archive them, but cooperating agencies would receive priority.
Part of the richness of the PANDORA Archive to date has been the breadth of its scope, achieved by including not only publications of substantial individual research value, but also a large sample of sites that taken together provide a picture of the way Australians use the web to inform the community about their organisations, communities, concerns and views. However, continuing to include this type of material at the current rate and with the current breadth means that we are archiving less high priority material with individual research value than is desirable.
It is therefore further proposed, in order to balance our collecting more, to collect social/cultural/community sites in a more defined and systematic way. While we would always want the guidelines to be sufficiently flexible to permit the archiving of any site that is of high quality and significant information content, in general these sites will now only be collected if they fall into one of a number of defined subject areas, for example, health and the environment.
New selection guidelines would spell out these subject areas, which would receive attention over a three-year period. Each year one third of the nominated subject areas would receive attention. At three year intervals these subject areas would be revisited to survey how web publication has developed, to re-archive sites that still exist, and to archive new sites of value.
Sites providing information about identified issues of current national interest, e.g., the Bali Bombing, refugees, natural disasters, and elections, would continue to be collected as they are now, and we would continue to be flexible in responding to these topical issues.
14. Proposed exclusions
The following categories will not be collected, even though the review identified some value in doing so. (See Part B of this paper for more detail.)
We will continue to monitor developments in these categories and work with other sectors towards a solution as opportunities present themselves.
Portals and games will continue to be excluded as it is considered there are good reasons for doing so.
15. The Conquences
The proposed approach will have a number of consequences, both positive and negative.
16. Involvement of staff from other areas of the Library
The Archive would benefit from the input of a wider range of Library staff on a more systematic basis. From time to time staff from elsewhere in the Library do make suggestions and this input is valued. Roy Jordan, now at the Parliamentary Library, continues to make very helpful suggestions.
It is proposed to involve other sections of Technical Services and Information Services in the identification of titles for archiving. It may be possible to get input from information specialists outside the Library as well and this possibility will be explored.
In the course of their work other areas become aware of Australian online publications. Technical Services staff already pass on information about titles but this information flow could be strengthened. Key staff in Australian Serials and Monograph Acquisitions could go further than drawing titles to the attention of the Electronic Unit, and could make selection decisions for archiving. They could also initiate archiving through the PANDORA Digital Archiving System for publications that are in straightforward formats. The transition from print to online publishing in some sectors, for instance, government publications and some types of Australian serials, should free up some time that could be redeployed to online publications. The feasibility of streamlining procedures further will be discussed within the Division, particularly in relation to the review of work teams.
Information Services staff would also become aware of online titles in the course of their work with readers, and in the preparation of subject guides. For instance, when a topic such as health insurance is in the news, there may be user demand for certain government publications on this matter. Feeding this information into the archiving workflow would enable PANDORA to capitalise on the knowledge of a broader range of Library staff and would strengthen the content of the Archive.
It is acknowledged that Technical Services and Information Services areas are feeling the pinch of insufficient staff numbers, and that this would need to be managed in a way to optimise the flow of information about online publications from the other areas, without impinging too much on existing work loads.
Involving staff from other areas more actively in the development of the Archive should have a positive impact on the content development of the Archive, and would also provide the opportunity for other staff to get to know more about the Archive and, in some cases, to develop new skills.
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Recommendation 18. In view of the large and increasing volume of Australian online publications and limited staff resources, it is recommended that priority for archiving be given to publications with substantial research content in the following categories. None of these categories would be collected comprehensively and each will be given equal weight.
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Recommendation 19. In order to capitalise on the knowledge of Australian online publications in other areas of Technical Services and Information Services, it is recommended that consultation with these areas take place with a view to setting up mechanisms to facilitate a flow of information to PANDORA. Whether it is possible to go further than this and have staff from other areas register titles in PANDAS and initiate the gathering of straightforward titles should also be explored. Input from information specialists from outside the Library should also be explored as opportunities arise. |
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Recommendation 20. The Collection Development Policy should be revised to reflect any changes in collecting policy for PANDORA that are endorsed by CDMC. |
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Recommendation 21. These recommendations and the collecting policy for PANDORA should be reviewed again in three years time. |
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendation 1. It is recommended that the selective approach to archiving should continue as the core focus of the collecting activity for Australian online publications;
Recommendation 2. It is recommended that the Library should continue to monitor closely developments with the whole domain harvesting approach to assess the feasibility of adopting this at some time in the future.
Recommendation 3. In order to find solutions for the more efficient archiving of government publications, and in order to be able to apply a variety of approaches according to the needs of a given situation, it is recommended that the Library investigate the feasibility of two broad strategies:
These two strategies overlap to a certain extent in that both depend on agencies making their metadata readily accessible. The second strategy is already underway, with seven agencies having signalled interest in working with the Library.
The results of this research and any functionality developed should be shared with partner libraries to enable them to significantly improve coverage of State and Territory publications.
Recommendation 4. Now that all the mainland State libraries and the Northern Territory Library are PANDORA partners and the State Library of Tasmania has effective processes in place for collecting and managing its government publications, it is recommended that the National Library should, in general, take responsibility for collecting Commonwealth publications only.
This decision should be formally conveyed to the partner libraries, stressing that if they do not collect government publications relating to their jurisdictions, they will be lost. The National Library would continue to notify the relevant partner library when it becomes aware of eligible State, Territory or local government publications.
Recommendation 5. While it is recognised that periodic snapshots of the entire Australia domain would complement the existing selective Archive and might have long-term research value, the cost of engaging in this activity is beyond the Library’s current means. It is recommended that no action be taken on a snapshot at present, but that a watching brief be maintained on the work of agencies that are collecting in this way, with a view to re-considering this decision should funding, legal and technological circumstances change.
Recommendation 6. It is recommended that on completion of the BSC Initiative relating to the Code of Practice, a strategy and guidelines for the routine reporting of commercial publications by its members be developed with the Australian Publishers Association.
Recommendation 7. It is recommended that the current practice of identification of online maps by the Maps Section and archiving (where technical capability permits) by the Electronic Unit should continue. This does not include the datasets of mapping agencies, the output of which needs to be addressed collaboratively at a national level by all parties with responsibilities for the creation and preservation of geo-spatial data. The database project (Section 10.8) should include a map among the resources for which it attempts to find a solution. .
Recommendation 8. It is recommended that music be selected and archived according to the proposed guidelines.
Recommendation 9. It is recommended that adult sites become one of the identified topical categories for sampling that will be revisited every three years.
Recommendation 10. Because of other, higher priorities at this stage together with a lack of technical capability, it is recommended that the Library not proceed to archive datasets for the present. However, because of the high research value of some of the information in this category, the Library may want to consider its position in relation to online information of this type, with a view either to collecting it when resources and technical capability permit, or encouraging its retention and preservation by some other sector.
Recommendation 11. Given other, higher priorities at this stage, it is recommended that the Library not embark on a project to archive daily online newspapers in the immediate future. However, the position could be reconsidered for the financial year 2004-05.
Recommendation 12. Given other, higher priorities at this stage, it is recommended that the Library not embark on a project to archive news sites in the immediate future. However, the position could be reconsidered for the financial year 2004-05.
Recommendation 13. At this point in time, given other priorities, it is not considered possible to add discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups to the Archive. It is therefore recommend that this category of online resource should not be collected at this stage.
Recommendation 14. Ideally it would be desirable to have a small selection of CAMS in the Archive. However, given other, higher priorities it is recommended that they not be selected for archiving at this stage.
Recommendation 15. While ideally it would be desirable to archive a range of blogs to illustrate the phenomenon, given the need to prioritise, it is recommended that the Library archive blogs only when they support the high priority category of academic publications.
Recommendation 16. For the reasons given in Section 10.15, it is recommended that the existing policy of not archiving portals should continue.
Recommendation 17. It is recommended that the policy of not collecting online games should continue.
Recommendation 18. In view of the large and increasing volume of Australian online publications and limited staff resources, it is recommended that priority for archiving be given to publications with substantial research content in the following categories. None of these categories would be collected comprehensively and each will be given equal weight.
Recommendation 19. In order to capitalise on the knowledge of Australian online publications in other areas of Technical Services and Information Services, it is recommended that consultation with these areas take place with a view to setting up mechanisms to facilitate a flow of information to PANDORA. Whether it is possible to go further than this and have staff from other areas register titles in PANDAS and initiate the gathering of straightforward titles should also be explored. Input from information specialists from outside the Library should also be explored as opportunities arise.
Recommendation 20. The Collection Development Policy should be revised to reflect any changes in collecting policy for PANDORA that are endorsed by CDMC.
Recommendation 21. These recommendations and the collecting policy for PANDORA should be reviewed again in three years time.
Appendix A
Definition of [Commonwealth government] publication
From Keeping Government Publications Online: A Guide for Commonwealth Agencies, July 2002
A publication is information, regardless of its format, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free of charge or for a fee. In theory, this includes everything on every publicly available Commonwealth government web site. In practice, the National Library will archive only certain types of online publications, including both those that are free of charge and those for which there is a fee for access:
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Version 1 |
September 2002 |
Version for consultation with the Reference Group 3 October 2002 |
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Version 2 |
November 2002 |
Incorporating comments of the Reference Group and further thinking and research, submitted to Pam Gatenby for comment on 29 Nov 02 |
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Version 3 |
December 2002 |
Improved version submitted to Pam Gatenby for comment instead of version 2 |
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Version 4 |
January 2003 |
Version incorporating Pam Gatenby’s comments and suggestions for a restructure and distributed to sub-group of CDMC for comment |
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Version 5 |
February 2003 |
Version incorporating comments of the CDMC sub-group and distributed to CDMC for meeting on 24 February 2003 |
1 Gatenby, Pam. Report of Senior Executive Fellowship to Research Digital Archiving in National Libraries, December 2002.
2 Gatenby, Pam. Op cit, pages 9-10.
3 Restrictions on access to commercial publications range from three months to five years.
4 Hitwise is a company which monitors the activity of 2 million Australian internet users to provide information to customers about usage of Australian and overseas websites in 150 industry and interest categories.
5 Bergman, Michael K., ‘The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value’ in The Journal of Electronic Publishing, vol. 7, no. 1, August 2001. Available at http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html
6 Phillips, Georgia. The Deep Web. Available at http://wollongong.apana.org.au/~gphil85/edit/course5/deepweb/deep_web.ppt
7 Henriksen, Birgit. Danish Legal Deposit on the Internet in International Symposium on Web Archiving, 30 January 2002, Tokoyo, Japan, page 7. Available at http://www.ndl.go.jp/e/enews/NDL-30012002-bnh2.doc.
8 Henriksen, Birgit. Op cit, page 7.
9 National Library of Canada, Electronic Collections Coordinating Group. Networked Electronic Publications Policy and Guidelines. October 1998. Available at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/publications/8/index-e.html
10 What the Electronic Unit calls a new title in its monthly statistics actually represents the number of new gatherings. One gathering can represent more than one title. For instance, in the case of a monograph in series one gathering may result in the addition of 20 monographs, which are catalogued individually. It can be argued that the number of items catalogued would provide a truer indication, more analogous to the counting of print items, of the number items taken into the Archive. For the first six months of the 2002-03 financial year, a total of 748 items were catalogued (569 original cataloguing and 179 copy cataloguing). Depending on how you define ‘title’ and how you count what we do, 1,500 may be a more accurate figure for the number of new titles likely to be added to the Archive this year. And the total number of titles in the Archive would be much higher than 3,300.
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