A Pew Research Center analysis reveals the impermanence of online content. Between 2013 and 2023, 25% of webpages vanished, with 38% from 2013 now inaccessible. Government and news websites frequently contain broken links, affecting 21% and 23% of pages, respectively. Wikipedia has 54% of pages with at least one dead reference link. On social media, nearly 20% of tweets disappear within months, often due to account changes or deletions. The study underscores the widespread and varied nature of “digital decay,” impacting diverse online platforms and content types. The methodology is explained.

The MetaArchive Cooperative announced that Educopia is ending its sponsorship, but members’ data remains secure. MetaArchive, the longest-running private LOCKSS network, will continue its operations, allowing members time to find new hosting solutions. The LOCKSS Program team is exploring options like finding a new host, merging with other networks, or creating new ones. MetaArchive’s resilience and collaborative approach have been vital, and its transition is seen as a positive example in digital preservation. Discussions for new partnerships are underway.

HathiTrust is excited to announce the release of its new Strategic Vision. In its first 15 years, HathiTrust has collected, preserved, and provided lawful access to more than 18 million texts in more than 400 languages. Today it stewards the single largest collection of digitized texts created by and for the academic community. This Strategic Vision responds to the changed circumstances of its member libraries, the world, and HathiTrust itself, but builds on existing strengths to outline critical and meaningful work over the next three to five years.

HathiTrust’s Strategic Vision

Join in for discussion of digitization, preservation and access for local historical newspapers with the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Local History & Genealogy team. The presenters will discuss the acquisition, impact, promotion and use of the Columbus Dispatch digital archive with NewsBank; efforts to digitize small and minority-owned newspapers, and acquisition and processing of the Columbus Dispatch photo archive. The perspective is that of an urban public library, although others in academic and special libraries will also find this content relevant.

Fair use is essential to the functioning of libraries, and underlies many of the ordinary library practices. As the Internet Archive celebrated Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week (26 February-1st March, 2024), this blog post describes a few of the ways the fair use doctrine has helped the Internet Archive build their library. The Fair Use Fundamentals infographic explains what fair use is, why it is important, who uses fair use, and provides some examples of fair use.

An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.

More than one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved, a study of more than seven million digital publications suggests. The findings, published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication on 24 January 2024, indicate that systems to preserve papers online have failed to keep pace with the growth of research output. Eve’s study suggests some measures that could improve digital preservation.

Se amplía la colección de periódicos digitalizados con una serie de títulos de vida breve que ilustran, desde 1811, las sucesivas etapas de la historia política de España. Con la incorporación de estas publicaciones procedentes del actual proyecto de digitalización de prensa histórica, además de otros títulos de prensa moderna digitalizados con fines de conservación, la Hemeroteca Digital supera ya los 3.400 títulos y los 96 millones de páginas, de los cuales 2.660 títulos, con 7.806.690 páginas, corresponden al fondo histórico. Ya están actualizados y disponibles en la Hemeroteca Digital de la BNE 101 nuevos títulos de prensa histórica.

Preservation organisations have reacted with alarm to a recent analysis that suggests around a quarter of academic publications are not being preserved for the future.

Martin Paul Eve of CrossRef assessed around 7.5 million ebooks and articles for which the organisation provides a fixed identifier, or Digital Object Identifier (DOI). For around two million articles in his study, he could find no evidence that the articles were being preserved. Librarians have been urged to play an important role in encouraging and requiring proper preservation. A toolkit to support librarians, including model license language, is available here: https://liblicense.crl.edu/resources/digital-preservation/. Martin Paul Eve also cited the Keepers Registry, a service hosted and managed by ISSN International Centre.

The final collection of project briefing videos from the CNI Fall 2023 Membership Meeting are now openly available on the CNI website, YouTube, and Vimeo channels. All meeting materials, including selected presentation slides, project briefing videos, the lightning round video, and opening and closing plenary videos are now available.