APPENDIX 134
Supplementary evidence from The British
Library
1. Please can you set out what the British
Library would consider to be "reasonable and appropriate
access" for each of the formats to be covered under new legal
deposit regulations? (Q255)
The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 has been
brought into force by Statutory Instrument on 1 February 2004.
However, the only publications for which statutory deposit is
currently required remain printed ones. The process of making
Regulations covering non-printed formats is potentially lengthy
and should be expedited by Government so far as practicable, consistent
with the maintenance of safeguards for both publishers and libraries.
Our understanding is that the process cannot
commence until the Government has established an Advisory Panel
to advise the Secretary of State on the making of Regulations.
The Government has yet to publish its recommendations on the membership
and terms of reference of the Advisory Panel, following which
there will need to be a period of public consultation, and thereafter
a process of appointment (according to Nolan principles). On behalf
of all the legal deposit libraries, the British Library would
hope that the Science and Technology Committee would encourage
Government to ensure that the Advisory Panel is set up without
undue delay.
In the making of Regulations, it will be necessary
to arrive at a definition of a United Kingdom publication, especially
in an online environment, which simultaneously recognises the
need for an appropriate territorial limitation (and thus protects
the economic interests of publishers) but also prevents any significant
"deposit gap" opening up in respect of material which
could legitimately be regarded as constituting part of the UK's
intellectual and cultural record. The libraries are currently
formulating their position in this matter.
In the making of Regulations, while there may
need to be limited provision for the exclusion of certain publications
from deposit (or, in the case of websites and certain other online
materials, eligibility to harvest), either absolutely or until
certain sales thresholds are passed, the default position should
be in favour of deposit (or harvesting), in accordance with the
collection development policies of the libraries. If, in a minority
of cases, there are grounds for believing that the economic interests
of the publishers might be prejudiced by access through the libraries,
the situation would be better addressed by requiring deposit but
providing for the libraries to impose embargoes on access for
a limited period. This pragmatic situation already operates, very
selectively, in the printed deposit environment.
In the making of Regulations, the libraries
should be permitted to undertake such acts with deposited or harvested
material as are necessary for their internal administrative purposes,
including the creation of metadata and preservation, the latter
act to include any necessary transfer of media or software refreshment
to ensure perpetual access to the material.
In the making of Regulations, the libraries
should be entitled to make deposited or harvested material available
to all categories of registered readers within the physical premises
of those libraries, by analogy with the situation which already
obtains for printed publications. For online material, the libraries
believe that a secure network connecting all the libraries is
likely to be the most efficient means of providing such access,
and it is to be hoped that Regulations will permit the establishment
of such a network. It is possible that there may be a case for
the number of simultaneous users to any particular material being
restricted. In the case of Trinity College Dublin Section 13 of
the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 would apply.
In the making of Regulations, consideration
should be given to circumstances in which some non-commercial
material might be made available beyond the physical premises
of the libraries without prejudicing the economic or other interests
of rightsholders.
In advance of the making of Regulations, libraries
and publishers are continuing to make progress with voluntary
schemes. It is hoped that a voluntary scheme in respect of electronic
journals, covering the collection, preservation and access of
those published on both subscription and open access business
models, and in electronic only or parallel printed and electronic
formats, can be set up relatively quickly. Given the direct applicability
of such a scheme to the work of the Science and Technology Committee,
it is hoped that its endorsement for such a scheme would be forthcoming,
and its encouragement of commercial publishers to participate.
2. Please can you supply data on the number
of publications in digital format that have not been deposited
voluntarily with the British Library? (Q256)
There is currently no authoritative bibliographic
control of UK electronic publications against which strictly such
an assessment can be made. The achievement of national bibliographic
control of electronic publications—to parallel that for
printed publications in the UK—will depend upon legal deposit
for its authority and comprehensiveness. However, the October
2002 Study Report prepared by Electronic Publishing Services Ltd
for the Joint Committee on Voluntary Deposit (Electronic Publishing
Services Ltd. The impact of the extension of legal deposit to
non-print publications: assessment of cost and other quantifiable
impacts. October 2002) concluded inter alia that if the
British Library's receipt of electronic publications were compared
against the universe figures of UK output:
— Of hand-held electronic publications
the Library was already receiving a high proportion of published
output, possibly in the region of 75%
— For electronically-delivered publications
(mostly electronic serials) coverage was much less good with the
BL receiving a smaller proportion of all published output, ie
possibly as much as 45-50%
The Report noted that from the strictest perspective
of the Voluntary Deposit of Electronic Publications scheme (which
is limited to hand-held items) these conclusions were of "considerable
comfort". However, online publications fall outside the formal
scope of the voluntary scheme and the overwhelming majority (including
4 million UK websites) are not deposited.
Electronic Publishing Services' estimates of
UK output volumes in 2004 was as follows:
|
| UK electronic publishing output (est) | 2004
|
|
| "Hand-held" | |
| Monographs: new in year | 300
|
| Serial titles: cumulative | 1,096
|
| Serial issues/parts | 3,762
|
| "Pure" electronic |
|
| Unique monographs/e-books | 500
|
| Serial titles: cumulative | 5,860
|
| Serial issues/parts | 132,435
|
|
As the Library noted in its written evidence to the Committee,
at the end of January 2004 2,024 electronic monographs and 1296
serial titles (388 hand-held plus 908 online serial titles in
88,000 issues/parts)) had been deposited with the Library since
the voluntary scheme started in January 2000.
3. Please can you summarise the findings of the studies
that have been carried out on the advantages and disadvantages
of physical and digital storage? (Q265)
Q265 asked about the relative costs of digital versus hard
copy storage, and the Library has addressed this question in those
terms.
H Shenton, "Life-cycle collection management",
LIBER Quarterly, 13 (3/4), 2003.
This article introduces the concept of life-cycle collection
management, a vital piece of context, and there is no better introduction
to BL activities. Life cycle collection management is a way of
taking a long-term and holistic approach to the responsible stewardship
of the British Library's collections. It defines the different
stages of a collection item over time, from selection and acquisition
to conservation storage and retrieval and identifies the economic
interdependencies between decisions made at various points in
the life cycle. The life cycle approach is equally applicable
to both the traditional printed item and the electronic publication.
L.S. Connaway and S.R. Lawrence, "Comparing library
resource allocations for the paper and the digital library",
D-Lib Magazine, 9 (12), 2003 —
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december03/connaway/12connaway.html
This exploratory study asked eleven US Association of Research
Libraries (ARL) librarians to identify the resources needed for
the transition of an all-paper library to the all-digital library.
The librarians were asked to consider two hypothetical types of
library—a "paper" library comprising paper books
and no electronic media and a "digital" library comprised
entirely of electronic publications—and to estimate future
resource requirements in the hypothetical all -digital library
compared to an all-paper library. The findings of the study indicate:
agreement that labour, space requirements and material resources
are estimated to be less in an all digital library than in a paper
library; concern around the costs of higher salaries need to attract
more knowledgeable and skilled staff; uncertainty around equipment
requirements; concern around the costs of maintaining both the
digital and the paper library simultaneously for the foreseeable
future.
R C Schonfeld, A Okerson and E G Fenton, "Library
periodicals expenses: comparison of non-subscription costs of
print and electronic formats on a life-cycle basis", D-Lib
Magazine, 1- (1), 2004— http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january04/schonfeld/01schonfeld.html
This study analysed non-collection cost data from eleven
US academic libraries, using a life-cycle analysis to study the
longer-term cost implications of the transition to electronic
periodicals. The study concludes that the transition to the electronic
format seems likely to afford reductions in libraries' long-term
financial commitments to the non-collection costs associated with
electronic periodicals. However the paper acknowledges there is
no long-term archiving solution reflected in the costings for
electronic materials and it recognises that, if the library community
is to continue to ensure the long-term availability of the resources
that it provides, some provision must be made.
S Chapman, "Counting the costs of digital preservation:
is repository storage affordable?", Journal of Digital Information,
4 (2), 2003 (Harvard and OCLC study to which Lynne refers) —
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i02/Chapman/
Harvard University Library and the Online Computer Library
Center inc (OCLC) each manage centralised repositories optimised
for long-term storage of library collections. Harvard assesses
costs for analogue storage per square foot; OCLC Digital Archive
assesses costs per gigabyte for storage of digital objects. The
study concludes that managed storage costs represent only part
of the full spectrum of preservations costs. Moreover, choice
of repository, scope of service, decisions regarding formats,
number of items, number of versions, etc are all potential variables
applying equally to traditional and digital repositories. A broad
consideration of these issues requires not only an assessment
of cost variables but also an accounting of the benefits associated
with these decisions.
April 2004
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