Yale-Elsevier Mellon Project

1. Yale-Elsevier Mellon Project NISO/BISG Digital Archiving ALA, New Orleans, January 20, 2002 Karen Hunter Senior Vice President, Strategy Elsevier Science

2. Context • Yale University Library • Elsevier Science • previous joint efforts

3. Yale Library as a player • history of electronic resources both on its own and with the NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL) • electronic expenditures of $1.4 million in 2000, $1.8 million in 2001 • clear that cannot endlessly continue to support duplicate collection of paper and electronic

4. Elsevier Science as a player • e-journal interest dates to late 1970’s • formal archiving policy in 1999 as part of ScienceDirect license • guarantee that would maintain archive or transfer to library-vetted repository • customer feedback: “neutral” archive now (i.e., in library hands) • also needed to protect authors’ interests • explored various archiving arrangements

5. Joint efforts • between 1997 and 1999 Yale and ES had explored the possibility of Yale being a local repository for some or all of the 1,100 ES journals • end decision: license for SD online because of fuller functionality • throughout, working relationship had been good; started this discussion in summer 2000, proposal to Mellon followed

6. Teams • Yale • Scott Bennett (PI), Paul Conway, David Gewirtz, Fred Martz, Ann Okerson (Co-PI), Kimberly Parker, Richard Szary • Elsevier Science • Geoffrey Adams, Emeka Akaezuwa, Haroon Chohan, Karen Hunter, Paul Mostert

7. digital archive >100 years archiving content, not format or functionality archive responsible for migration archive not competing with publisher archive shouldn’t be totally dark archive does not mirror pub. site archive does not create content not in original e-edition highly desirable for publisher to provide needed metadata standards are key archive not a “hot backup” for disasters Some of the starting assumptions

8. Work plan -- issues • what does it mean to be an archive • journal business life cycles • economic issues • contractual relationship between publisher & archive • metadata needs • archival uses independent of day-to-day uses • technical infrastructure

9. Work plan -- deliverables • metadata elements • model license • a prototype

10. Sizing the problem • Elsevier Science published 1,100 journals when project started • acquired Harcourt (Academic Press, Saunders, Mosby, Churchill Livingstone) mid-2001, raising number of journals to 1,500 • backfile digitization project (v.1, no.1) • guestimate: 6.5-7 TB

11. What is an archive? • publisher’s production “archive” • normal customers with locally-held files (ScienceDirect On Site) • “self-designated archives” -- national bias • “official” archives -- formal relationship for “perpetual care”

12. Journal business life cycle • Scott Bennett’s starting premise: • “...information half-life, which is the point at which the commercial value of e-journal content to the publisher has declined to the point where the publisher hands off preservation and access responsibilities to an archiving agent”

13. Trigger events • failed to find such a half-life • felt too early in the e-publishing process • for example, we want to recover costs of retrodigitization • extensive, fascinating discussion of “trigger events” • points when archive can go bright to the public • could not identify trigger events • except if publisher goes out of business and no successor taking ownership of assets

14. Economic considerations • inability to foresee a half-life and unlikely trigger event leads to question: Does it make sense to establish an archive now, given costs involved? • conclusion: yes • libraries need archives to go e-only and it will only be riskier, more difficult and more expensive later • how to fund: part of next phase

15. Contractual relationship • issues different from normal license, including: • perpetual nature of an archive • service level agreement • trigger events -- public access • financial terms • format for submission • comprehensiveness of archive (e.g., “withdrawn” material)

16. Metadata needs • adoption of both OAIS and OAI as standards to be used • detailed evaluation of the metadata work done by others, most notably the British Library • also close analysis of metadata currently captured by Elsevier • mapping of needs and gaps • mapping to Dublin Core for prototype

17. Archival uses • notion that there are uses made of an archive that are quite different from normal day-to-day researchers’ use of journals • if could be identified, could open the archive for such uses immediately • started discussion with history of science faculty

18. Technical infrastructure • needed to understand the publisher’s e-workflow and what the publisher can delivery (now or with modification) • needed to understand what others are doing • series of site visits (to ES Amsterdam, Royal Library, British Library, Chase, etc.) • want to learn from others and avoid re-inventing the wheel • importance of standards (OAIS and OAI) clear

19. Deliverables • metadata elements -- done! • “Description of Metadata Elements for the Yale Electronic Archive” • model license -- work in progress • early version that needs more wordsmithing and legal polishing • prototype -- done! • working prototype that was registered with ARC for OAI harvesting

20. Next steps • we have learned a lot, including that we can work together and must work together if this is going to happen • now we want to build the 6.5-7+ TB real thing • part of that process will be further identifying ways to collaborate with other archives internationally

21. A word of thanks... • … to Ann Okerson and the Yale team for letting me “borrow’ from the draft project report to prepare this presentation