Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA)

Rozz Evans

Collection Development Librarian

Newsam Library & Archives

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What is DERA?

A permanent digital archive of largely born digital document-based

publications from Government and related (publicly funded) bodies

selected for their relevance to the subject of Education

http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/

It is *not* a website archive

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Why did we need to develop DERA?

• Increase in electronic-only publications – from late 90’s accelerated rapidly

• Link Rot!

• Permanent removal/disappearance/loss of documents

All meant that the integrity and completeness of one of our most important collections was at serious risk...

How did we do it?

Staff

Developments in customisable software and work across the HE sector (SHERPA, JISC etc)

Institutional support

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Progress2008/2009 work began in earnest. The idea of DERA was born March 2010. Went live February 2011.

E-prints repository software – customised by Bernard Scaife (Systems Librarian, with the support of University of London Computer Centre (ULCC))

Technical background: Scaife, B (2011) From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA)

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue67/scaife/

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CopyrightCrown and Parliamentary material - Open Government Licence/ Open Parliament Licence

Other organisations – approached individually for permissions. 99% positive responses.

Some difficulty where copyright on e.g. DFE Research Reports still rests with individual author or institutions.

Notice and Take Down policy & Due Diligence

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Why is it so important?Permanence of link

Unique documents

Includes range of publications not collected by any other libraries (including the British Library)

Freely available, searchers using Google etc will find DERA documents

Metadata is open licence and downloadable via OAI-PMH

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Key factors for successDiscrete subject area and clear definition of what is to be included

Right mix of staff involvement – collections, technical, cataloguing

Commitment to principles of preservation and access

Institutional support

Collaboration from ULCC

Critical mass of material from depositing bodies + interest/support/copyright

What is there and where does it come from?Born digital documents selected by Official Publications librarian &

Parliamentary material from Official Publications Online (OPO)

Deposits of digital publications archives from organisations which have closed/changed remit or who cannot preserve their publications themselves for whatever reasons

Includes: BECTA, LLUK (closed)

LSC and predecessor organisations FEFC etc (now YPLA and SFA)

GTCE (due for closure Summer 2012)

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Recent developments

POPE (Preserving Official Publications in Education) - a

JISC funded project to catalogue and deposit into DERA 5000+ documents

published pre-2009 – due to complete end of February 2012

Project website/blog: http://ioepope.wordpress.com/

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Future plans

Sustainability

Investigation into formats

Possible expansion into other kinds of organisation

Enhancement of features

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Users

Original purpose – preservation and access

Statistics indicate increasing usage

Known users include HE researchers, teachers, charities, government departments, librarians etc

Future plan to get user feedback etc in order to improve

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Useful informationInstitute of Education Official Publications Collection http://www.ioe.ac.uk/services/545.html

SHERPA www.sherpa.ac.uk

Directory of Open Access Repositories www.opendoar.org

 JISC http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/digitalrepositories.aspx

 

Open Government Licence - The National Archives http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/

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Keeping up-to-date with DERA progress

Newsam News (Library Blog) http://newsamnews.ioe.ac.uk/

Twitter @IOELibrary

r.evans@ioe.ac.uk