Our Goal
Librarians have traditionally accepted responsibility for the long–term preservation of the scholarly serial literature they have purchased. This has been realized through the dedication of resources to cover the binding of journal volumes, conservation of materials over time, as well as by maintaining adequate shelf space to house them. In the past, journal publishers have not contributed financially to these preservation activities. The growth of digital serial literature has presented librarians with many complex problems in fulfilling their familiar archival and preservation functions. Libraries tend to license rather than own electronic literature from publishers. Shall we depend on publishers to maintain long-term electronic access to their archives when they have not played this role for print literature? Or shall libraries, working cooperatively with each other and with publishers, meet the challenges of developing digital archives? In addressing the myriad of questions surrounding how best to develop and maintain reliable digital archives, this study will focus on a complex discipline. We will develop an archive of serial mathematics literature that will be available to libraries worldwide and at the same time serve as a model for similar efforts in other disciplines within the library and publishing communities.
Our objective
We will create a distributed, interoperable system for the long-term preservation and dissemination of digital serial literature in mathematics and statistics. To do so, we will develop and implement a system that adheres to the principles put forth in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model. At an operational level, we will establish metadata requirements and communication protocols for data ingest, data management, archival storage, archive administration, and access processes. The two institutions will establish data and metadata structures that will enable separately administered databases to function as a digital archiving system, and the preservation requirements of this distributed set of repositories will be managed through common processes.
Workplan
Our original workplan provided for three general steps in the project lifecycle, each lasting one year: Creation of Metadata, System Design, and Implementation. The plan identified and scheduled ten phases, well-conceived work units that would complete the project in the three-step model.
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