Criteria for Defining Electronic Resources that Possess Archival Value to Yale University

27 July 2000 Collection Development Council, Yale University Library

The Yale University Library has developed a formal statement of our Expectations regarding Creating Archives of and Perpetual Access to Electronic Resources. One of the practical aspects of this statement is the notion that not all resources possess archival value. Therefore, a selection process is necessary to identify those resources for which we feel archival treatment is required.

The below document is intended as a guide for the selection staff of the Yale University Library. While other individuals and entities may find it interesting or useful, no effort has been made to expand the definitions or provide broader contexts to those not already part of the selection milieu of the library.

The process of identifying e-materials worthy of receiving archival treatment is a complex one, on the order of identifying materials worthy of selection for the collection in the first place. [Related resources may be found on Managing Electronic Resources at Yale University Library.] Many factors inter-relate and are balanced in different ways for different resources. Keeping this in mind, the following principles and considerations are intended to assist the process. The principles and considerations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Once a selector determines that a resource is worthy of archival treatment, the following steps should be taken:

1. Determine whether the vendor supplies archival treatment up to Yale's standards. IF NOT, THEN:
2. Check with local technology infrastructure support to determine whether Yale has the capacity to take on appropriate archival responsibilities ourselves (at present, this means consulting with Kim to add this to the list for capacity analysis). AND/OR
3. Encourage (push, suggest, aggitate for) a national initiative to designate a trusted third party to take on appropriate archival responsibilities

Considerations and Actions:

(1) Those resources to which the mass-market (at least for the near-term) will demand access, and thereby promote continued care of by the producer should be monitored, but there is less need to require archival treatment until the market changes.

ACTION: None

EXAMPLES: Web of Science, Science Magazine, Wilson Indexes

(2) For some resources the data matters, but the company, interface, or vendor providing the data does not. If the data is treated archivally by *someone* it matters less if our chosen instantiation of the content is not.

ACTION: Check for archival treatment by ANY vendor

EXAMPLES: Company Data, Medline, News Feeds and Resources

(3) For reference works like encyclopedias or directories, it is important to think about archival treatment of "historical record snapshots" of the resource and not just archival treatment of the latest ongoing version. Consider whether these historical record snapshots are extracted (frozen) on a frequency basis at least equal to that of the publication of their print counterparts and supplements.

ACTION: Check for archival treatment of snapshots

EXAMPLES: Encyclopedia of Associations, Biographical Dictionaries, Oxford

English Dictionary

(4) If a collection or aggregation has an historic life of its own apart from the aggregated parts, then it is important that any added value be preserved in its own right.

ACTION: Check for archival treatment

EXAMPLES: JSTOR, EBSCOHost, EGC Data sets, PROLA

5) If a significant part of a work, such as the scholarly apparatus of a monograph, is published separately and only in electronic form or on the Internet, adequate archiving is critical to insure that researchers have access to all parts of the work.

ACTION: Check for archival treatment by publisher

EXAMPLES: Robert Kaplan's The nothing that is : a natural history of zero. New York : Oxford University Press, 2000, c1999.

(6) Since research into the historical record depends to a degree on the accessibility, the surroundings, and the presentation of a particular piece of information content, consider the need for preserving some representative stages of this contextual record for archetypical information resources.

ACTION: Check for emulation capture by the provider

EXAMPLES: ???

Principles:

(1) Place a high priority on requiring archival treatment of traditional indexes and abstracts.

(2) Place a high priority on requiring archival treatment of scholarly publications, and in particular to parts [such as the scholarly apparatus] of such publications as may be published separately and only in electronic form on the Internet.

(3) There is little need to require archival treatment for packages which we collect in aggregated form only for convenience.

(4) The cost to archive an electronic version of a resource is almost always less at the present time than the cost of reconstructing that resource from its component parts or print equivalents. Place a high

priority on requiring archival treatment (as appropriately selected above) even if the resource has a print equivalent.

EXAMPLES: Palmers Index, NYT index, HAPI, JSTOR, Web of Science

© 2008 Yale University Library Electronic Collections Department Last modified: 08/14/00

http://www.library.yale.edu/ecollections/archivingselection.html