User:John Cross/digital library deposit consultation

Digital Library Deposit Consultation

The point of this page is to draft a response to the consultation with this snappy title: "Proposal on the Collection and Preservation of UK Offline and Microform Publications and UK Online Publications (Available free of charge and without access restrictions)".[1]

The summary on the DCMS website is as follows: "The Department for Culture Media and Sport has launched a consultation on the legal deposit of UK offline and online non-print publications which are available free of charge and without access restrictions."

The consultation is guided by the Government's Code of Practice on Consultation which is available at: http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/bre/code/page46954.html

Q1

What are your views on the options considered for this content?

Option 1: Legal Deposit Library Permissions-based Harvesting and Archiving

I note LDAP's own analysis of this option - that it would result in "a less than comprehensive collection would come at a much higher cost per unit for publishers and Libraries and that "Permission is only successfully obtained in 30% of cases".

The historians of the future will have to wonder about the other 70%. There is a danger that the preservation process will not only be incomplete but that it will also be in a sense biased.

Take for example a future study of approaches to climate change in the first decade of the 21st Century. It is likely that the views of not-for-profit organisations will differ from those expressed by commercial companies. However not-for-profit organisations may be more likely to give permission for their sites to be archived than their commercial counterparts.

Option 3: Archiving Left to the Market

Leaving archiving to the market is not a workable solution, commercial businesses involved in will focus on content that is likely to generate a profit. Investors in commercial enterprises normally expect a return within a few years of making their investment for almost all businesses it would be unthinkable to invest in something that will not generate a return within 15 years.

Archiving is about preserving content for future generations, it is about works of cultural, historical and spiritual value not just those with commercial value. Whilst people all over the world value being able to read the Magna Carta and the works of Charles Dickens it is unlikely that they would want or expect to pay a significant amount of money to do so.

Q2

Are there any other options that should have been considered? If so what are they?

No.

[may want to talk about other changes that could supplement this]

Q3

Do you agree with the analysis of these options? Explain why.

Q4

Do you agree that harvesting provides the most efficient and timely solution for deposit of publications in this category? Explain why.

Yes. Material that is published on websites can by archived automatically. Once the system is set up very little human intervention will be needed.

Q5

Do you agree regulation is the most cost-efficient method of collection for the Libraries and imposes no direct financial or administrative burden upon the publishers? Explain why.

Yes we do, although we prefer to think of it as deregulation as libraries are only prevented from archiving content on websites due to excessive provisions of UK copyright law.

Q6

Do you agree that this is an appropriate definition for the type of publications that should be included in scope for regulations? Explain why. Is there anything else that should be included in this definition? Is there anything that should be excluded from this definition?

We do not think the definition is wide enough, we see no reason to exclude:

• Sites outside the United Kingdom
• Recorded sound and film

We can see no reason to treat the archiving a video and sound files, differently from text and image files. Although we recognise that the Regulations are secondary legislation and must be made using the powers available under the Act.

Q7

Do you agree with the territorial definition of the UK web? Explain why. Is there anything else that should be included in this definition? Is there anything that should be excluded from this definition?

We would question whether the following requirement "Publications should be lawfully published or made available by or on behalf of that publisher from a UK address;". This would appear to impose a requirement on libraries to check whether content is lawfully published in the UK, this could mean libraries having to check every file to ensure there is no breach of copyright or any other law which would make archiving painfully slow to the point of making it impractical.

Q8

Do you agree with this analysis of the UK Web Domain? Explain why. What do you think the impact of your analysis would be?

Q9

How do you see a Deposit Library driven system of web harvesting interfacing with a publisher driven duty to deposit under the 2003 Act?

Q10

How could Deposit Libraries most efficaciously ensure a comprehensive body of eligible content is deposited?

The UK Web Archiving Consortium is already engaged in automated harvesting of websites, the main thing holding back the progress of the archive is the need to seek and obtain permission and assurances from the owners of websites.

(make notes about the current form)

Q11

Do these assumptions adequately reflect the financial burden of publishers? Is there anything that needs to included or excluded?

Q12

Do these assumptions adequately reflect the financial burden of publishers? Is there anything that needs to included or excluded?

Q13

Do you agree with the analysis of these options? Explain why.

Q14

Do you agree with the analysis on making content available to the Deposit Libraries? Explain why. What else needs to be taken into consideration?

Q15

Do you agree with this costing model? Explain why. What else needs to be taken into consideration?

Q16

Do you agree with the analysis of the costs and the impacts of each option? Explain why. What else needs to be taken into consideration?

Q17

Do you agree with risks identified here? Explain why. Are there other risks that have not been considered? What would their impact be? Are some of these risks actually not really risks? Why?

Q18

Do you agree with LDAP’s recommendation to regulate for this content? If not, what should be done instead?

Q19

Do you agree with LDAP’s proposed method for depositing of content? If not how else could this be done?

Q20

Do you agree with LDAP’s analysis of access provisions? Explain why. What other options are there?

Q21

Do you agree with these cost assumptions? Explain why. What needs to be included or excluded?

I have no comments on the cost assumptions.