OPTIMIZING THE NUMBER OF COPIES FOR PRINT PRESERVATION OF RESEARCH JOURNALS
Candace Arai Yano · 2008
Academic libraries are reducing their holdings of print journals as more of this material becomes available electronically, but librarians, researchers and other users of this material, such an electronic archivists of journals, are concerned that some copies remain available. Journal archivists are especially concerned about preservation of “clean” copies that retain full information accuracy from the vantage point of the researcher. We describe the results of research project designed to provide guidelines and insight to decision-makers in this context. As a prelude, we report briefly on statistical analysis of “defects” in the pages of 25 journals for their entire publication history. This provides a backdrop and motivation for our approach to the problem. We then present models for two storage protocols, both of which have the goal of minimizing the cost of ensuring, with a high probability, survival of at least one copy for a specified time horizon. One protocol involves archiving only clean copies in a secure environment, and the second protocol is a hybrid approach that combines clean copies with backup copies that can be “cleaned up” to replace clean copies that are lost or damaged. We also discuss other domains where our methodology can be applied.