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The "KB" — An Update with a National Archive

In 2002, Elsevier was the first publisher to partner with the National Library of the Netherlands — the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) — to archive comprehensive digital content. The KB’s publisher partners now include Kluwer Academic, Blackwell Publishing, BioMedCentral and Elsevier. Library Connect interviews Johan Steenbakkers, Director of E-strategy at the KB, to find out more.

Library Connect: What led the KB to engage in publisher partnerships for digital preservation?
Johan Steenbakkers: In contrast to other European libraries, the KB’s deposit is not covered by legislation, but is based on voluntary agreements with individual publishers. As a result, the KB has developed close relationships with Dutch publishers over the years, and our deposit collection has achieved excellent coverage of publications appearing in the Netherlands.

It was some ten years ago when digital publications first appeared — on hand-held carriers, such as floppy discs and CD-ROMs. Publishers sent these to us, as they would print books and journals. However, when digital publishing of networked information started, the situation changed dramatically and it had a profound affect on the roles of both the library and the publisher. Until that time, publishers produced and sold their publications and also provided a copy to the deposit library for archiving. Now publishers had to get actively involved in the archiving process, especially the technical standards. Permanent contact was needed between publishers and the library to sort out issues about formats, transport protocols and other technical issues, and even for the process of depositing itself. As a consequence of the ease of copying and distributing digital information, it was also necessary to revise conditions of access to the archive to cover the digital publications.

At the KB we had to develop completely new skills and create an archiving infrastructure to handle digital publications, to preserve them, and to keep them accessible for use, both for now and in the future.

Library Connect: What does the partnership with Elsevier involve?
Steenbakkers: Well, the partnership really began back in 1998 when we sought co-operation from Elsevier in our digital archiving efforts. We wanted to obtain digital material to experiment with, in both local and international projects on digital archiving (See the international project NEDLIB at
www.kb.nl/hrd/dd/dd_projecten/nedlib_publicaties-en.html).

Fortunately Elsevier was, even in those early days, willing to provide the KB with digital publications. This made it possible for us to experiment with real-life digital material. Elsevier was also the first publisher to deposit its e-journals at the KB, initially those with an imprint (location of publishing) in the Netherlands. This enabled us to migrate our responsibility as a depository into the digital era.

Once the KB had developed the skills and infrastructure for digital archiving it became clear that selection for depositing of international networked publications on the basis of imprint was somewhat odd. It also appeared that archiving all of Elsevier’s e-journals would not mean much additional work. At the same time, Elsevier was looking for an independent archiving partner. In 2002 the KB agreed to become Elsevier’s first “official archive,” and the agreement was put into practice in 2003. In the words of Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President for Strategy at Elsevier: “As we move toward journals being available only in electronic form and being held centrally on publishers’ computers, the public has the right to be assured that, should a publisher go out of business, these files will not be lost. The agreement with the KB provides that assurance for Elsevier titles, which constitute an essential part of the core scientific literature currently published.”

In a recent article, “Partners go Dutch to preserve the minutes of science.” (Research Information, September/October 2004, Issue 13, pp. 18-22) Geoffrey Adams, Director of IT Solutions for Elsevier, explains more about how Elsevier is depositing its journals with us.

Library Connect: What have been the practical implications for the KB in receiving and storing publishers’ data?
Steenbakkers: The development of a digital archive, or “e-Depot” as we call it, has had a great impact on both the strategy and practices (workflow, skills, organization, and so on) of the KB. The task of the “Information and Communication Technology” department was substantially extended but did not change as such. However, the task and organization of “Acquisition and Processing” and “Research and Development”, two of the KB’s four main departments, have changed drastically.
To deal with digital publications two new departments have been created within these departments - the “e-Depot” for operating the digital archive, and “Preservation Research,” with the task of further developing functionality for digital preservation and guaranteeing permanent access to e-publications.

Library Connect: Have there been any particular benefits for the KB?
Steenbakkers: Our national library wants to continue to do a good job and help library visitors acquire the information they need. The drive to set up the KB’s digital archive was the great (potential) success of digital publishing, apparent to us some ten years ago. We realized that, as a deposit library, the KB also had to guarantee the long-term availability of these types of publications. It’s important to realize that e-journals are normally licensed and not (like printed journals) collected by libraries. This means that archiving is no longer implicitly guaranteed by print library collections around the world. Agreements with publishers - “traditional” commercial publishers, “Open Access” publishers, academic repositories, or other types of digital publishers - are necessary for us to explicitly arrange archiving of their digital publications, beginning from the day they are published.

What's in it for the KB? - That we can continue to do our job in the digital era. And I can assure you that realizing an archive of digital information and guaranteeing its accessibility now and in the future is tough but very interesting work.

One practical advantage is that, since the KB’s deposit collection can be fully used onsite in the library, we can offer our visitors a rich and fairly comprehensive digital collection for extensively searching the digital scientific literature.

Library Connect: What are some of the most important or unexpected issues that have arisen?
Steenbakkers: We did not plan to go international with our archival activities but international publishers such as Elsevier were looking for partners to archive their publications. And, as Karen Hunter expressed, “the KB was a logical partner, well-known as a leader worldwide in experimentation and investment in digital preservation.” This leading position came somewhat as a surprise to a medium-sized national library with a modest budget. Of course, we are very happy and proud to have now been selected by several other international publishers to become their first official digital archive.

Library Connect: What do you see as the future focus of the KB’s archiving efforts?
Steenbakkers: In addition to maintaining the digital publications archived at the KB and improving the processes and organization involved, we’re focusing on further preservation research to guarantee permanent access to digital information. This research doubtless requires international co-operation and the KB is actively looking for international partners and working on a European research agenda for Permanent Access to the Records of Science (  www.kb.nl/coop/euconference/index.html).