81
partnership)
libraries that
do not benefit
from the
commitments
made by other
archival
agents
the historical
inquiries
typically
supported by
archival
services;
ordinary users
of the
publisher's
content that is
no longer
commercially
viable are also
supported by
the archive
and rendering
software may
differ from
that ordinarily
provided by
the publisher,
given the
different
audience of
users
for the
commercially
viable part of
the publisher's
content; few
restrictions on
access to the
content that it
not
commercially
viable;
protection
against service
disasters is a
possible, but
secondary,
mission
access to the content
that is no longer
commercially viable
subsidize
archival
activity
NOTES
NOTE 1: A library willing to negotiate a national site license could function for an entire
nation in the manner of a consortial archival agent.
NOTE 2: The access column defines the scope of library operational security provided
by each archival agency. For instance, the consortial archival agent ensures permanent
online access to all of the publisher's content but only to consortial members, while the
publisher-archival agent partnership ensures largely unrestricted permanent online access
only to commercially non-viable content.
NOTE 3: The defining concern of the publisher-archival agent partnership, as
distinguished from the two other kinds of archival agent, is to identify content that is not
commercially viable. Such an agent seeks in this way to minimize conflicts between the
commercial mission of the publisher and the preservation/access mission of the archival
agent. No boundary between commercially viable and non-viable content has yet been
identified. Such boundaries may in time be established by a "rule of thumb" (as has been
done with JSTOR or proposed in the case of PubMed Central), or by invoking some set
of yet-to-be-specified "trigger events."
NOTE 4: Self-identified archival agents and publisher-archival agent partnerships might
provide access to commercially viable content to libraries that once had licenses for that
content and/or to libraries in developing countries to which publishers wish, as a matter
of good public policy, to provide content for free or at steeply discounted prices.
NOTE 5: Should boundaries between commercially viable and non-viable content be
established, consortial and self-identified archival agents may wish to reshape their
services with regard to those boundaries, to provide some online access to readers beyond
the boundaries of the consortium or physical site. If enough archival agents did this, it is
not clear that the publisher-archival agent partnership would have a distinctive function.
