Shared Archiving Austria is a joint inititative of all Austrian University Libraries with the goal to implement an Austrian-wide archiving policy for already existing print copies. Print volumes which are electronically available will be archived only once. This does not necessarily mean cumulation at one institution, but to identify institutions owning the best holdings and selecting them as archiving libraries. This principle of shared archiving should lead to equal distribution of burden. The archiving institution is obliged to ensure certain quality standards like long-term preservation and fast content availability (e.g. via document delivery). Other partners are free to weed out their duplicates with the benefit of reducing expenditures for their university.
The partners agreed upon initiating this project not based on new premises or external money but primarily by utilizing their existing strenghts, competencies and facilities.
The initiative benefits greatly from three well-established nation wide cooperations: the Kooperation E-Medien Österreich >> (KEMÖ; cooperation for e-media in Austria), which is the Austrian consortium for joint acquisition of electronic media, the Österreichische Bibliothekenverbund und Service GmbH >> (OBVSG), operator of the Austrian Union Catalogue and Search Engine and the Forum Universitätsbibliotheken Österreichs >>(ubifo; Council of Austrian University Libraries), plattform for regular meetings of the directors of university libraries.
Contact Persons:
Brigitte Kromp
Wolfgang Mayer
sharedarchiving@ubifo.at