Reference Publishing Advisory Committee

The CODES Reference Publishing Advisory Committee sponsored a program at the Annual Conference in New Orleans, “eReference Publishing: Current Issues and Trends in Preservation.” Joseph, Yue, Chair of the committee, moderated the panel discussion. Speakers included:

  • Jacob Nadal, Preservation Officer, UCLA Library
  • Heather Ruland Staines, Sr. Manager eOperations at Springer Science + Business Media
  • Marie McCaffrey, Executive Director, HistoryLink.org
  • Ken DiFiore, Associate Director, Outreach & Participation Services,Portico

Jacob Nadal provided a broad discussion of preservation and how it relates to eReference. Three Core Issues in Preservation:

  • Reliable storage: What is the best way to store the information?  Backup vs. storage. Backup is the recovery of systems but the systems are subject to obsolesce and require maintenance.  Storage is for the recovery of content, which can be much more durable and technology independent.  Clouds, tape libraries, RAID arrays (inexpensive discs) are all viable.
  • Choosing formats and technology platforms: What is the best format and platform to store information? Open-source? Proprietary?
  • Planning for obsolescence: There will come a point when the digital materials we use today won’t be usable. It’s a problem, but not a pressing problem.

Bill McHugh, Chair