Recap & Reflection on Perpetual Access

Perpetual access is a subject of great importance to librarians who are invested in preserving copies of digitally licensed works. In the past when a librarian cancelled their subscription to a print journal, they still retained all the back issues of that journal from the period of their subscription. Perpetual access serves the same purpose but for electronic resources. Through clauses in licensing contracts, libraries work with publishers to ensure continued access to subscribed content, even after the subscription ends. The back-up copies are created through the process of digital archiving. Libraries, publishers, and third party organizations can all perform the digital archiving, depending on the terms of the license. 

Some of the most common digital archiving tools are LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, and Portico.  These tools serve different functions and are activated in different ways, meaning that some combination of them may be the most desirable for sustained perpetual access. The library’s ability to store back-up copies through digital archiving is always limited by the terms of the license agreement. Our exercise in searching for perpetual access provisions in real contracts was intended to reveal differences in the language and show that often there is ambiguity about what exactly the publisher agrees to in a perpetual access clause.

Although many libraries claim that preservation is still an important goal, a relatively small amount of libraries have actually been involved in securing perpetual access for their materials. Likely this is often due to budgetary constraints as getting perpetual access permission from a publisher may cost more. Adapting to the necessary technology may prove to be another obstacle. Admittedly, the preservation goal seems to be a concern for academic libraries more than public libraries. In the future, this may lead to further specialization among different kinds of libraries.

This raises questions about how committed librarians should be to perpetual access; while it seems ideal in theory, maybe there are sacrifices that should be made while transitioning to electronic formats. Storing electronic files creates unique challenges in ensuring continued compatibility for outdated file types, and even good file formats may deteriorate over time. Transitioning from print to digital will leave a large gap in the historical record if something ever happened to the electronic storage devices. Perhaps digital preservation may not be enough.