DOME COLLECTIONS - ESL p. 3

 

 

Preserving At-Risk Digital Engineering Conference Proceedings

Content

A library-curated collection of ephemerally published digital engineering conference proceedings would fill a significant need for long-term access to a key genre of engineering science and practice.  A DOME site where CD-ROM and web-based versions of conference papers and proceedings could be collected, described, and curated over the long term would be a contribution to MIT scholarship and world scholarship.  An ongoing effort by MIT engineering librarians to identify conferences attended by MIT engineering faculty has informed our understanding of which proceedings are, in fact, at risk, as well as which proceedings are of research interest to MIT.

Size

From hundreds to potentially several thousand documents.

Age

1980's to date.

Source

Barker Library; open web; various scholarly societies, many ephemeral

Rights

Mix of public domain materials with items where digitizing would be permitted for use at MIT.

Anticipated Audience

Engineering students and faculty.

Benefits

Access and archival stability: Conference proceedings publishing practices are more complex and inconsistent than for journals, and they present a range of archival risks greater than electronic journals.  These challenges have always existed in the print realm, but now there are added archival risks for engineering proceedings. For example, smaller conference publishers may provide free electronic access to proceedings on the Web, causing libraries to forego purchasing print versions, but without any assurance that the electronic version will persist.  Unlike journals, with their predictable publication cycles, conference proceedings may disappear from regular acquisition and selection workflows when publishers stop creating print editions, or tangible digital (CD, DVD) editions.

Format Risk

Some risk of complete loss if MIT depends on web-based and obsolete digital formats stored on CD-ROM.

Format

Web-based and CD-ROM formats (various)

Metadata

MARC records are available for some CD-ROM products, but not at the article or paper level.  Some records may be available for web-based proceedings.

ESL Contact(s)

 

Funding

 
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