Selective archiving of web resources: a study of processing costs

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess costs in the National and University Library of Croatia for processing Croatian web resources and the maintenance and development of the service, and to analyse the present organisation and workflow of their processing, and to propose improvements.Design/methodology/approachThe assessment period was two months, during which the members of staff involved minutely monitored their tasks. The results were compared to the same exercise reported by the National Library of Australia and processing costs of cataloguing Croatian print publications.FindingsThe bottom‐up analysis of processing web resources shows that a balanced description of tasks and their distribution over staff members was established, and that the present workflow meets the requirements of efficient processing of web resources. As a general finding, approximately the same time was spent on archiving new items, as on the control and maintenance of the already archived ones due to the change of web resource properties, URL instability and the changes of technology. The comparative analysis showed: less time is spent on identification and selection and publishers' contacts on the part of the Croatian National Library compared to the Australian one; almost twice as much time was spent on gathering, quality assurance, and archiving instances in the Australian case than in the Croatian one; practically the same time was spent on cataloguing in both cases; and compared to cataloguing of print publications, significantly less time was spent on the print ones.Originality/valueThe paper is one of the two published articles on the in depth analysis of the workflow and processing costs of managing and selectively archiving legal deposit copies of web resources in a national library. Its potential value is in drawing attention of library managers of those institutions that deal with selective web archiving to assess costs and services in view of the legal obligations of libraries for preserving national cultural web heritage and meeting present and future users' needs.

Strategia selektywna jako narzędzie w archiwizacji Webu. Analiza wybranych przykładów

“…Spostrzeżenia na temat dobru kryteriów selekcji w przypadku archiwum o charakterze narodowym przedstawili Daniel Gomes, Sérgio Freitas i Mário J. Silva 5 . W przypadku takich inicjatyw zdarzały się także przypadki ich ewaluacji, co miało miejsce chociażby w Chorwacji 6 .…”

Some economic aspects of the scholarly journal system

“…Preservation costs are also given, but are not included here. Two studies (Phillips, 2005; Willer, Buzina, Holub, Zajec, Milinovic, & Topolscak, 2008) analyzed the processing time necessary to archive web resources (e.g., journal articles). The total time (including gathering, quality assurance, archiving, and cataloging) ranged from about three to five hours per item.…”

Impact assessment indicators for the UK Web Archive

“…Multiple studies exist on various aspects of web archiving projects, and while they described their status quo at different times (Willer et al , 2008; Costa and Silva, 2010; Niu, 2012; AlSum et al , 2014), they did not specify the means of assessing their impact. No comprehensive assessment or evaluation of the UKWA has been conducted to date.…”

“…Multiple studies exist on various aspects of web archiving projects, and while they described their status quo at different times (Willer et al, 2008;Costa and Silva, 2010; The authors acknowledge the support from Nicola Bingham (The British Library) and Helena Byrne (The British Library) for the generous provision of helpful information regarding the UK Web Archive and constructive comments on the questionnaire. This paper would not have been possible without the UK Web Archive, whose staff participated in the interviews and surveys.…”