NETWORK OF ALABAMA ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

Task Force on State Publications and Records

November 17, 2005

The Task Force on State Publications and Records met on November 17, 2005, in a conference room at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Chairman Diann Weatherly called the meeting to order at 1:00 p.m. Others attending the meeting were: Dwayne Cox and Barbara Bishop, Auburn University; Tracey Berezansky, Alabama Department of Archives and History; Lucy Farrow for Rickey Best, Auburn University at Montgomery; Vicky Baggett, University of South Alabama; and Sue Medina, NAAL.

Ms. Weatherly welcomed the members, and noted that several conflicts prevented the other members from attending. However, she hoped the Task Force could begin work on its charge for her report to the NAAL directors in April 2006.

Dr. Medina reviewed the history of NAAL's concern with state publications, beginning with the effort to change Alabama's laws for a state publications depository system. Although the law was changed, the program was never funded. She reported that three NAAL members, Auburn University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and University of Montevallo had added records to OCLC for as many state agency websites that could be identified at the time. This was part of an initial effort to use these sites to identify online state publications, which would subsequently be cataloged into OCLC. It has become obvious that identifying and creating metadata for these publications can not be a manual effort. A more recent concern of NAAL has been the need for a strategy to archive and preserve electronic state publications.

Ms. Weatherly reported on her recent participation in a national conference, "Persistence of Memory, Stewardship of Digital Assets." This conference addressed topics related to managing and preserving digital assets over the long term. Without intervention, these materials will not survive. Conference topics highlighted evolving best practices for digital preservation including: Mandates for Digital Preservation; What is a Digital Asset; Use Requirements and User Needs; Internal Cooperation; External Consortia; Obsolescence and Risk; Technology: Storage and Backup; Metadata for Preservation; Legal, Economic, and Moral Obligations; Financing Digital Preservation; and Sustaining Digital Preservation.

Ms. Weatherly highlighted some of the issues raised by Richard Pearce-Moses in his presentation "What Is a Digital Asset?" She reiterated his comments about it being impossible to plan a preservation program around acquiring digital assets item-by-item. He recommended strategies would acquire assets by provenance and use of technical solution to capture materials by categories.

Ms. Berezansky reviewed the responsibilities of the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) for identifying, collecting, and preserving state records. She noted that Archives works to access as long as it can. However, in some instances, it cannot assure access forever, as the crumbling original newspaper files attest. She also noted that Archives has never been funding adequately for its responsibilities, and as result can only do what it can with limited staffing and other resources. She reported on a project that Archives has undertaken to test use of the Internet Archives to "spider" Alabama state agency websites. The Internet Archive uses its spider to capture the content of the website a schedule determined by the ADAH. Unfortunately, transferring the test project to an ongoing program would cost a minimum of $10,000 for 100 website url addresses, and Archives does not have funding to do this.

The Task Force briefly discussed how this could be funded. Ms. Berezansky noted that ADAH can set the rights for access, and these can be public or restricted. The Task Force contemplated the possibility of all the NAAL members "subscribing" but then making access public. It was also suggested that this might a good project for the Alabama Virtual Library to fund for public access.

Ms. Berezansky noted that this is new project, and there are still some issues to be resolved. She will provide information to the Task Force when ADAH makes its final report evaluating the pilot.

The Task Force discussed two technical solutions, the Illinois Find-It software, and the IMLS-funded project "Capturing E-Publications of Public Documents" at the University of Illinois.

The Task Force discussed next steps. They agreed that more knowledge about the issues would be helpful, not just for the Task Force members, but for all the NAAL librarians. They agreed to ask the Executive Council for funding for a workshop. They suggested inviting Richard Pearce-Moses and representatives of the "technical solutions," from Illinois Find-It, the IMLS-funded project, and possibly the Internet Archive. Dr. Medina said she would try to determine a cost to accompany the request to the Executive Council. As a last resort, the workshop could be set up on a cost recovery basis.

Ms. Weatherly suggested that the Task Force would not plan to meet again until after a response from the Executive Council, probably not until after February 2006. She thanked Ms. Berezansky for providing an excellent meeting facility along with great refreshments. There was not further business, so the meeting adjourned.