WP7: Archiving and Digital Preservation

We are looking to provide guidance and simple tools to help [small?] open access presses archive and preserve their books and associated content (e.g. video, audio files etc.). We will be looking to create help guides which outline tiers of options available to publishers (i.e. good, better, best) with the overarching message that there isn’t a single solution which will be suitable or useful for all publishers. In addition, we are looking to make it easy for publishers or authors to create archival, or robust, links for linked content in their material. Our aim is to enable publishers and authors to be able to automate as much of these processes as possible.

The work package is a collaboration of publishers, librarians, researchers, and preservation experts. It is jointly led by Loughborough University and Open Book Publishers with close involvement from Jisc, the Digital Preservation Coalition, and the British Library.

We have:

• held a workshop with digital preservation experts
• spoken to open access presses about their preservation practices and ambitions
• spoken to digital preservation services about their offerings to smaller publishers
• been sharing knowledge with related projects and initiatives
• investigated the options of using Thoth (see WP5) to automatically ingest metadata and files into an archiving or preservation system
• investigated manual and automated (API based) workflows for using institutional repositories as an archiving mechanism for OA presses

We plan to:

• publish a scoping report on the current state of play for OA presses
• create a toolkit and guidance documentation for OA publishers and authors (and, potentially, librarians)
• contact and speak to additional projects, presses, and preservation experts
• create a useable tool (hopefully API based) to enable permanent links to be created in books and works
• created proof of concept software for publishers to upload content for archiving to university repositories via an API

Yes please! The more people we speak to working on similar topics or in similar areas the better the guidance, tools etc. we can provide for the OA presses and authors. One of the many great things about the work we are doing is how related projects and experts have been willing to engage and share their knowledge and expertise.

• Dr. Gareth Cole, Loughborough University Library (WP co-lead): g.j.cole@lboro.ac.uk
• Dr. Rupert Gatti, Open Book Publishers and Trinity College, Cambridge (WP co-lead): rupert.gatti@openbookpublishers.com
• Dr. Miranda Barnes, Loughborough University (Research Associate): m.l.barnes@lboro.ac.uk
• Prof. Jenny Fry, Loughborough University, School of Design and Creative Arts (academic mentor): j.fry@lboro.ac.uk