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| Johan Steenbakkers appointed Knight of the Order of Oranje Nassau. |
The Hague, 12 November 2007 Johan Steenbakkers, Director of e-Strategy and Property Management of the KB, the National Library of the Netherlands, has been appointed Knight of the Order of Oranje Nassau on account of his achievements in developing the e-Depot, the digital repository of the KB. The ceremony took place during the international digital preservation conference Tools & Trends, which was organized by the KB on the occasion of Steenbakkers’ retirement.
Steenbakkers played a vital role in developing a storage system for digital publications. The first ideas for such a system were developed in the early 1990s, when electronic publishing was first introduced and the KB decided that e-publications should be included in the national deposit collection. Dr. Steenbakkers not only developed an innovative vision on the future of electronic publications and the KB’s role, but he also came to be the moving force behind a joint IBM/KB project to develop a repository system which met the demands of long-term storage and access. Thus the e-Depot came to be, a world first in the storage of electronic documents, journals and websites.
Ten million articles in the e-Depot
Dr. Steenbakkers’ knowledge, drive and enthusiasm allowed the KB to gain an international reputation in the area of digital preservation. Considerable interest was roused worldwide and twelve major publishers, including Springer, Elsevier, Blackwell and BioMed concluded archiving agreements with the KB. Just before Steenbakker’s retirement, the 10 millionth journal article was ingested.
Tools & Trends in digital preservation
During the international conference Tools & Trends, the latest tools were presented that are being developed to ensure perpetual access to digital objects. The special vulnerability of digital objects requires a dynamic, worldwide approach. Tools & Trends afforded a growing international community of researchers the opportunity to share ideas on the challenges involved and possible solutions.
Digital objects can take many different shapes, and they are being created across various disciplines. Therefore, the KB conference also included the most important trends in such disciplines as physics and audiovisual archives. The conference offered new inspiration to tackle the many problems of digital preservation.
Strategic global analysis
Archiving and preserving electronic scholarly publications and ensuring their access for the long term is a key priority for the KB. To provide a sound evidence base for this long-term strategy and analyse how to respond flexibly to a variety of possible future developments and events, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek commissioned RAND Europe to analyse the KB’s e-Depot strategy. RAND Europe, an independent not-for-profit research organisation, examined the key determinants of sustainable digital preservation of scholarly publications, with specific reference to developing a robust approach to the archiving of such records at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Netherlands. The report, entitled ‘Addressing the uncertain future of preserving the past’, can be downloaded from the KB-website and the Rand website .