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Re: Legal deposit libraries

Dear Peter,

  That can not be the whole story. The Radcliffe, the Oxford legal
deposit library, receives print copies of the IUCr journals. The library
assistant told David (Watkin) that they don't pay. From the message I
received from Fiona, a userid and a password for on-line access was sent
to the Radcliffe. Certainly I could not e-access the journals from
David's lab. Maybe it would have been possible from inside the Radcliffe
itself but I did not go there. 

  When you have time, there is really no rush, can you look at the
subscription lists you received from Munksgaard and see if the legal
deposit libraries in the UK, Denmark and Switzerland receive copies and
if possible if they pay. (Is it possible to know who else is receiving
free copies - editors and co-editors are but who else.) Could you also
try and see if they have activated their e-access. Could you also see if
the academic institutions in the cities where the deposit libraries are
situated have subscriptions to our journals. (I think for Oxford you
will find that neither chemistry nor physics has a subscription as they
just go and make photocopies in the Radcliffe.)

  Do you know if there any legal obligation for the IUCr to undertake
legal deposit of its journals in the UK or Switzerland? The question of
who the publisher(s) is/are is very obscure for me.

  As you can imagine the financing of the e-archiving undertaken by the
IUCr is in my mind. I can accept free deposit in these libraries if they
are providing a part or the whole of the archive service (both for
long-term preservation and access). In practice I suppose that
Munksgaard do not give copies of electronic files (pdf, HTML) of the
IUCr publications to the Royal Danish Library and I also suspect that
the Royal Danish Library does not download them either. In such case
they are not doing any long-term preservation at all on our e-journals.
I hardly need to tell you that in any case the pdf and HTML are not the
ones needed for long-term preservation. To whom do you give or have you
given the SGML masters? No preservation can be undertaken without them.

 I read the first two chapters of the JISC work book last night. I did
not really find it as informative as the OAIS document. However if you
look in the sections headed 'costs' you will find ample quotes to send
to the finance committee as a justification for not producing a detailed
costing of e-archiving for the IUCr.

Best wishes,
  H.

-- 
Howard Flack        http://www.unige.ch/crystal/ahdf/Howard.Flack.html
Laboratoire de Cristallographie               Phone: 41 (22) 702 62 49
24 quai Ernest-Ansermet             mailto:Howard.Flack@cryst.unige.ch
CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland                   Fax: 41 (22) 702 61 08

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