Background Information

History

The Austrian Shared Archiving Initiative was born by merging two similar initiatives which were launched independently of each other: The focus group "National Archiving Concept” which was installed by the Council of Austrian University Libraries (ubifo) for the purpose of drawing up a relevant theoretical concept and a second project started by the Vienna University Library to reduce the number of duplicates stored at the library’s approximately 50 locations. The two projects were subsequently brought together in 2011 to concentrate competencies and avoid parallel activities.

In 2012 the partners agreed on choosing the journals of the American Chemical Society (ACS) as a test run for implementing efficient plans of procedures between the institutions. Two working groups, a "contract design“ and a "workflow“ group, created templates for the future frame of the contract and for product specific amendments. Additionaly they demonstrated the potential to establish shared archiving processes without generating excessive additional costs.

In 2012 the project was officially approbated, the frame contract was signed by all Austrian universities and the individual institutions appointed representatives as responsible contact persons for future joint archiving projects.

In 2013, the first Austrian archiving project was realized. Seven institutions with substantial holdings signed the respective amendment to the frame contract to collectively archive the journals of American Physical Society (APS)  and Vienna University Library was selected as archiving library. To learn more about our activities since the launch take a look at our list of archiving projects.

With 2014 contact and information exchange with other European archiving initiatives were intensified and first steps building an international infrastructure were taken which resulted in a panel discussion at an IFLA satellite meeting in Paris. As a workspace for members of Shared Archiving Austria, OBVSG implemented a dedicated section in the Austrian Library Network`s wiki.

In 2015 seven European initiatives came together at Vienna University Library and agreed on their future collaboration. In 2016 this international collaboration was consolidated and renamed to EPICo.
After a meeting during the conference “Sharing is Caring” at University of Mainz (Sep 2016) a tight collaboration with Speicherverbund Nord (Germany) to adapt metadata for archiving started. This resulted 2018 in the implementation of a new metadata schema for the Austrian Union Catalog (based upon the then new library system ALMA).

In 2020 OBVSG was assigned by degree to coordinate Shared Archiving Austria (under the designation Shared Storing Austria) and in 2021 a position for coordination was installed with immediate results, like updates of infrastructure and wiki.

Literature

  • Deborah Shorley, Daryl Yang, Brigitte Kromp, Wolfgang Mayer:
    Collections Earning Their Keep. An Overview of International Archiving Initiatives.
    In: 027.7 Zeitschrift für Bibliothekskultur 3.2015, 1, pp. 30-46 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4704913).
  • Brigitte Kromp, Wolfgang Mayer:
    Gemeinsame Archivierung an den österreichischen Universitätsbibliotheken: Neues Geld statt altem Raum
    In: Bruno Bauer (Hg.): Universitätsbibliotheken im Fokus. Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Universitätsbibliotheken an öffentlichen Universitäten in Österreich (=Schriften der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare (VÖB) 13), pp. 87-98. Graz: Neugebauer, 2013 (http://eprints.rclis.org/24282/)
  • Brigitte Kromp, Wolfgang Mayer:
    Shared Archiving as a Chance to Acquire Fresh Money for Collection Development. World Library and Information Congress: 77th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 13-18 August 2011. (https://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2011/113-kromp-en.pdf)