Permanent accessibility of Kluwer Online publications assured by national library's e-Deposit
Peter Hendriks, CEO of Kluwer Academic Publishers, and Wim van Drimmelen, Director General of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, today signed an agreement on long-term digital archiving of the electronic publications of Kluwer Online. Under the terms of this agreement, Koninklijke Bibliotheek will receive digital copies of all Kluwer journals and books made available on its web platform, Kluwer Online. The web platform now contains 235.000 articles from 670 journals and more than 600 e-Books covering the areas of science, technology and medicine. In 2003 alone more than 70.000 articles and 400 e-Books will be added.
In 1994, the KB decided to include electronic publications into its deposit collection. Since then, research and development on long-term digital archiving has been top priority in the National Library of the Netherlands. In close collaboration with IBM the KB developed the e-Deposit system, which was implemented in December 2002. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek was the first national library in the world to own an operational system for the deposit and long-term preservation of digital publications.
For everybody involved in research and the communication of research results - authors, researchers, librarians and publishers alike - the agreement between the KB and Kluwer is yet another step forward in keeping digital archives available in perpetuity. The KB tries to enter into similar agreements with all major scientific publishers.
The KB will provide on site access to the journals on a current basis to all who come to the library and are permitted access to the library's collections. The agreement covers new publications as well as digitised backfiles. In addition, should there be a catastrophic disaster such that the Kluwer Online system is inoperable for a long period of time, the KB would be part of the interim service system. Finally, should Kluwer or a successor cease interest to make these journals available on a commercial basis, as an official archive the KB could open access to all on a remote (in addition to walk-in) basis. With this agreement Kluwer is able to provide its customers with a solid and secure long-time archiving solution for electronic publications.
19 May 2003
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