| Eileen G. Fenton Executive Director Portico |
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In early 2006 Portico began to operate its not-for-profit electronic archiving service. Our mission is to provide a permanent archive of scholarly literature published in electronic form, beginning with journals. In our discussions with a broad range of publishers and libraries that have chosen to include participation in Portico as an important component of their archiving strategy, and in our earliest months of operating the service, several interesting themes have emerged. Publishers are now developing explicit and often multi-layered archiving strategies and are seeking the needed partners or tools to execute them. Libraries are also increasingly developing multi-faceted preservation strategies which may include tools such as LOCKSS, third-party arrangements, such as Portico, and institutional or regional repositories. Strategies vary with institution size and resources, and are at various stages of development and implementation. From our early work to receive published content, convert it to an archival format, ingest it into the Portico archive, and make it available for audit and verification purposes, we are discovering how publisher and library preservation strategies may benefit from coordination. Experience with the content is also highlighting ways in which the complexities of the e-journal content must shape the practices and policies of digital repositories — whether those repositories are operated by third parties such as Portico or by individual academic institutions. Preliminary conclusions about how these themes and lessons illuminate other aspects of electronic preservation will be shared as will an update on the status of the Portico archive, including publisher and library participation and a demo of archived content.
Handout (MS Word)