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Karen Cargille

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Column Editor

The Balance Point

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Karen Cargille, Column Co-Editor

with contributions by Rick Anderson, Peter B. Boyce,Kimberly Douglas, Rebecca A. Graham,

Karen Hunter, and Sally Morris

Few questions in serials librarianship these daysevoke as many differing responses as the questionof who should maintain archival copies now that se-rials are migrating from paper to electronic format.Furthermore, there are issues concerning what actu-ally constitutes an electronic journal and whetherarchiving should be an issue at all. A diverse groupof serialists share their perspectives on the issueof digital archiving and where information pro-viders might be headed in their efforts to addressthis challenge.

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Rick Anderson

I like this question because it allows me to really getdown to first principles, and I’ve discovered that thecloser you get to first principles, the less actual workyou have to do and the more time you get to spendtalking and writing about interesting abstractions.Let’s face it: the essential nature of information is aninteresting concept; the most effective method of pur-

Cargille

is Head, Acquisitions Department, Universityof California, San Diego Libraries, 9500 Gilman Drive,Department 0175A, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175; e-mail:kcargille@ucsd.edu.

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chase order generation isn’t. When it comes to discus-sions about digital archiving, there’s just no escapingthe abstractions; at base, it’s not a technical problembut a philosophical one. You can’t make sense of thisissue without establishing up front what you meanwhen you use terms like “document” and “library.” Soin the spirit of avoiding real work, for a little while atleast, let’s establish working definitions for thoseterms first.

If information is what results when a mind encoun-ters data, interprets them, and creates a representationin symbolic form, then a document is what resultswhen that information is fixed in some kind of me-dium. “Fixed” is a relative term, of course, and in theelectronic realm it can refer to a representation that isreally pretty ephemeral. But I’m going to use the term“document” to mean any symbolic representation in aform more fixed than thought or speech. Handwrittennotes, e-mail, sound recordings—any format that fixesinformation for an appreciable period of time is capa-ble of creating a document.

A “library” is the organizational means by whicha community selects, gathers, and organizes docu-ments and administers the circulation of them amongits members. This definition, I think, applies equallywell to all libraries, whether public, academic, orcorporate. A library is usually sponsored by somekind of community, whether corporate, political (i.e.,a town), academic, or religious. It is always admin-istered by the community for its members, thoughothers may be allowed to make limited use of it. Inthe sense that people generally use the term, a librarywill usually contain lots of books, but it may containother documents in any number of other formatsas well.

The question at hand is “What kind of institutionshould act as the archive for commercially producedelectronic documents?” For now the choice seems tobe between publishers (which produce the documents)and libraries (which gather, organize, and distributethem among members of their sponsoring communi-ties). It seems to me that an electronic document is,philosophically speaking, one more or less like anyother; the question of whether the responsibility forkeeping and maintaining such a document should restwith its publisher or with a library can perhaps be re-solved by answering the following questions (listed inno particular order):

1. Which institution is technologically best pre-pared for the job?

2. For which institution does the archival functionprovide a closest fit to mission?

3. For which institution does the archival functionbest fit the historical role?

There are probably other important questions as well,but these offer a good starting point and their answersshould, I think, give a pretty accurate sense of direc-tion. Let’s look at each in turn:

1. Are libraries or publishers better prepared to ad-dress the technological difficulties of electronic ar-chiving? I admit that this is a trick question. It’s a littlelike asking “Who’s the better runner, a fish or asnake?” The answer, of course, is “neither.” Publishersand libraries both face a very steep learning curve anddaunting fiscal and technological barriers when itcomes to digital archiving. But that fact, in and of it-self, tells us nothing about which institution is the log-ical choice for that function. Libraries are typically un-derfunded, it’s true. But how many publishers realizea net profit sufficient to underwrite digital archiving oftheir back catalogs? And as for technology, I’m will-ing to bet that most research libraries are far betterequipped than the vast majority of publishers. As thepublishing world continues to consolidate, we maywell end up eventually with a very small number ofhouses with very deep pockets, all of them willing andable to set up and maintain digital archives of their cat-alogs. It seems more likely, though, that the veryforces pushing publishers to consolidate will also pushthem away from such projects. Unless a digital archivecan persuasively be shown to generate revenue, it willbe a tough sell in the boardroom or at the stockholders’meeting.

2. Which institution is best suited to the archivalrole in terms of overall mission? Publishers (profitand nonprofit alike) exist to find salable information anddistribute it in document form to a buying public. Al-though they maintain limited backlists, there is noth-ing inherent in the publishing enterprise that pushespublishers to maintain archives of everything theyhave ever published. Libraries, on the other hand, areall about spending money on archival projects. Whilethey struggle, like every other institution, with thechallenges inherent in new and constantly evolvingtechnologies, they have a built-in institutional incen-tive to overcome those challenges and create viable ar-chives. Frankly, I can’t imagine that publishers wouldwant the job. There is no money and considerable painin it—and most publishers can barely afford to publishnew materials, let alone archive old ones. More impor-

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tant, though, it’s simply

not what they do.

They coulddecide to, but that would constitute a sea change intheir general mission.

3. For which institution does archiving best fit thehistorical role? Libraries are quite good, though per-haps not excellent, at archiving physical documents;they have been doing it for a very long time. Publish-ers, on the other hand, have

never

done it. That doesn’tnecessarily mean that they shouldn’t now, of course,but it seems a bit silly to insist that they do so when theincentives are minimal, their traditional mission isbarely related to the archival project, and we havenever asked them to do it before. In the face of historyand economics, the burden of argument is on thosewho say that digital archiving should be a publisher’sjob and that it should

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be the library’s.Does all of this mean that libraries are actually go-

ing to become the permanent electronic archives ofthe future? I used to think so (in fact, I thought so acouple of months ago when I started writing thisarticle), but now I’m not so sure. It is starting to seemmore likely to me that a third way will emerge.JSTOR is an obvious step in this direction. Neitherpublisher nor library, JSTOR acts as a permanentelectronic archive for print journals. What makesJSTOR an interesting animal, however, is the fact thatit is so explicitly based on the print model of journalpublishing. Its “full-image” approach to archiving isintended to provide full (if virtual) access to a set ofphysical documents. While such a model has clearmerits, it is hard to imagine that it will be the control-ling one in the future. Chances are good that serialpublication itself will eventually become an almostexclusively electronic undertaking, and that the on-going archiving model will have to change to reflectit. But just as neither the snake nor the fish makes agood runner, I am becoming increasingly convincedthat neither the publishing nor the library professionwill be the one to take on and fully develop archivingprojects. Instead, I suspect that a new sector of theinformation world will soon take shape, and thatarchiving itself will become a (potentially rich) newarea of economic endeavor. Librarians would do wellto keep an eye out for such a development because ifwe don’t help to shape it, other segments of the mar-ketplace surely will.

Anderson

is Electronic Resources/Serials Coordina-tor, University Libraries, University of Nevada-Reno,Reno, NV 89557; e-mail: rickand@unr.edu.

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Peter B. Boyce

Just asking the question, “Who will keep the ar-chives?” demonstrates that we don’t fully understandthe real situation with electronic journals. All of ushave been so conditioned by the practices establishedfor the old paper-based regime that we try to apply in-appropriate or irrelevant concepts to the world of elec-tronic information.

This is true for more than journals; we face a com-pletely changed information world. The advent of theWorld Wide Web, whose protocol—the language ofconnectivity—is spoken and understood by every com-puter in the world, has made a greater impact upon theworld than Gutenberg’s invention of movable type.The impact of the universal connectivity offered by theWeb will continue to grow. And it is all taking placemore rapidly than we can fathom—certainly morerapidly than the time it takes to redevelop our base ofexperience and to rework our thinking. It is time to ex-amine all of our fundamental assumptions about what“archiving” means. Even the terms we are used todon’t work any more. They are superceded by newwords representing new concepts:

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Archives

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—old terms,fine for paper communication and nearly irrelevantfor electronic information.

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technological refreshing

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accessrights

—the new terms important for ensuring per-manence of electronic information.

In order to fully understand the problem of ar-chiving, we have to know what an electronic journalreally is. Perhaps this is best done by contrasting thenew and the old, the paper and the electronic worldsand their institutions. Once we understand how differ-ent the paper and electronic worlds are, we can beginto discuss the problem of preserving information.

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Old: The term “archive” conjures up dark vaults, con-trolled conditions, and as few users as possible. An oldpaper book, though robust, suffers some damage eachtime it is brought out into the light and humidity and a