MLA 2007 Sunday, May 20

I attended a presentation by the Portico people. Portico is a not-for proft off shoot of JSTOR and their reason for being is to provide an archive of electronic materials that will exist as a complete repository for participating publishers of all digital content published on the web. Portico collects all of the digital content the publisher makes available to them and strips away all extraneous "content" such as formatting, preserving only the text and graphics relating to the text for permanent archiving. Participating libraries who agree to "contribute " dollars will then have access to this content if the publisher should cease to exist, if the publisher names Portico as the sole archiver, or if the library's own collections are destroyed [see Katrina] in which event a participating library will be able to "link" their users to this content. Currently 35 publishers are participating with a majority of those 35 publishers naming Porticio as the sole archiver. Over 340 libraries are also participating including our very own ZSR. Participating libraries are asked to make an annual Archive Support payment that is based upon that library's total Library Materials Expenditures. I can't evaluate the feasibility of this program for us but Molly B is well-acquainted with this program and has done an evaluation for us. I can only report that it seems that Portico is picking up participants but there seems to be no "critical mass" developing on whether Portico's approach will dominate in field with other players like Locks (sic), etc.