Portico Participation Offer - Update Letter

Portico Participation Update Letter

Dear Colleagues,

Many of you have expressed a desire to be kept apprised of Portico's activities and development, and we have previously reported to you on the initial support which Portico has received from JSTOR, Ithaka, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Library of Congress.

We have also kept you informed of the publishers - commercial, university press and not-for-profit entities - that have now committed to archive more than 3,500 scholarly journals with Portico (http://www.portico.org/about/part_publishers.html ). I write now to share the latest news of Portico's activities, focusing on our engagement with the library community.

We have made important strides since Portico's launch at the ALA Midwinter meeting in San Antonio, and the library community's response to Portico has been terrifically encouraging. At the ALA Annual meeting in New Orleans, more than 80 librarians attended the inaugural Portico Participants' Meeting where we announced the initial 100 libraries who have committed to ongoing support of the Portico archive. (View the full list of participating libraries - PDF.)

Encouragingly, libraries from across the spectrum – small private colleges through large university systems – are committing to partner in this digital preservation effort, demonstrating not only that digital preservation is a broad-based concern among all types of libraries, but that libraries are prepared to take steps to deal with it. By supporting Portico, libraries are demonstrating their readiness to take an active role in addressing the urgent need to preserve electronic scholarly journals – a need so clearly articulated in the "Urgent Action" statement endorsed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and others. (The full statement is available at http://www.arl.org/osc/EjournalPreservation_Final.pdf .) We are pleased that Portico, together with other preservation efforts, can contribute to building the broad preservation infrastructure that is now so critical to meet the community's diverse preservation needs. We are energized by the support offered for our work, and it further strengthens our commitment to provide a reliable archive that will facilitate the community's orderly transition to secure reliance upon electronic materials.

Even as we have made this important beginning, we recognize that there is much more to be done, and we look forward to keeping you informed of our progress over the coming months without, we hope, being too intrusive. In the meantime, should you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please feel free to contact me.

If you would like more information about Portico, or would like to discuss your institution's participation in Portico, please do not hesitate to contact us at participation@portico.org .

Best regards,
Eileen Fenton
Executive Director, Portico
eileen.fenton@portico.org
http://www.portico.org