Integrating a Free Digital Resource:
The Status of Making of America in Academic Library Collections

Kizer Walker
Cornell University
kw33@cornell.edu

The Making of America (MOA) projects at Cornell University and the University of Michigan provide searchable, full-text digital access to a growing body of primary materials documenting American social history in the second half of the 19th century. Between the separate sites maintained by the two collaborating institutions nearly 9,000 monograph volumes and approximately 150,000 journal articles are currently available through MOA, free of charge, to users around the world. In June and July 2001, as part of an on-going evaluation of this resource, Cornell University Library surveyed academic libraries that link to MOA to gather an impression of how and why these institutions are integrating MOA into their collections. The survey assessed the impact of the availability of the digital resource on collection development and management decisions regarding print versions of titles duplicated in the MOA collections. The report that follows presents the survey results and situates them in relation to actual use of the MOA collections as tracked over three weeks in Web logs. The author also interviewed principals of the projects at Cornell and Michigan to determine their reactions to the survey findings and future plans for MOA; the interview follows the survey report.

MOA Institutional Use Survey
The MOA survey adapted and expanded on surveys conducted by JSTOR in 1999 and 2000, the results of which suggest that libraries in increasing numbers have been willing to let go of print journal backruns and rely on JSTOR to archive and provide access to these materials in digital form. Would libraries' handling of the openly-accessible MOA collections show similar tendencies?

Librarians involved in administration, collection development, reference, and acquisitions at approximately 250 institutions were invited to respond to a Web-based survey on their institutions' use of MOA; a single response was requested for each institution. Along with a series of multiple-choice questions, survey participants had the option of submitting open-ended comments on the MOA collections. We compiled the list of invited participants from academic library Web pages containing links to the URLs for the Cornell and Michigan MOA sites as identified via commercial search engines (1). Institutions of all sizes received the survey mailing: 58 of the 112 Association of Research Librarians (ARL) member institutions were among the survey recipients, including 22 of the libraries ranked among the top 25 in the 1999-2000 ARL Membership Index. Approximately 10 percent of the survey mailings were sent to institutions outside North America.

Librarians from 93 institutions answered the survey. Two responses came from Canadian institutions and eight from libraries outside North America. We received 28 responses from ARL member libraries, including 13 that ranked among ARL's top 25. As figure 1 illustrates, around half of the U.S. respondents represented Ph.D.-granting institutions, approximately one-third Master's colleges and universities, and the rest undergraduate institutions.

Figure 1: MOA Survey U.S. Respondents by Carnegie Classification Category

Who uses MOA?
The MOA survey focuses on the integration of MOA into academic library collections, but academic research is one among many uses of MOA. Sample Web logs of the MOA site administered by the Cornell Library provide a revealing—albeit lower-than-normal use—snapshot of the collection. Recorded over three one-week periods in December 2001 and January 2002, the logs indicate that over 90% of 97,378 distinct visits to the Cornell MOA site originated from users of machines registered to the commercial (e.g., ".com") and network (e.g., ".net") domains. Presumably, private individual users of commercial Internet service providers account for a considerable number of these visits. Visits originating from U.S. academic institutions—that is, from education domains (e.g., ".edu"), whether from library computers or not—accounted for approximately 7% of the total. Visits to the Cornell MOA site for the period under review are broken down by domain type in figure 2. Logs show 126,119 visits referred to MOA from other sites. Academic sites (including Cornell Library pages, but not pages within the MOA site itself) comprised approximately 33% of all such referrals.

Figure 2: Top-Level Domain Types by Visits to MOA

Though outside the scope of the present report, detailed study of non-academic use of the MOA collections is needed. Meanwhile, Web usage statistics provide necessary context for our findings regarding the status of MOA in academic library collections.

The reports, generated from usage logs with WebTrends Web analytic software, rank 200 organizations for each log period according to the number of visits to MOA from machines registered to that organization. Of the 89 U.S. academic institutions among these recurrent visitors, Ph.D.-granting universities represented a sizable majority at nearly 80%. Users at these universities accounted for around 90% of academic visits in the three weeks under consideration. The libraries at 61 of the 89 institutions from which the visits originated are ARL members. Users from institutions that responded to the MOA survey comprised 22% of academic visits. Figure 3 breaks down visits to the Cornell MOA site for the logged period according to the Carnegie typology.

Figure 3: MOA Visits from U.S. Academic Institutions by Carnegie Classification Category

Why do academic libraries provide access to MOA?
By and large, libraries seem to regard MOA as a valuable enhancement to their print holdings, but not as a suitable replacement for print collections. 85% of all librarians responding to the MOA survey reported that they provide access in order "to add titles not held in the library's print collection"; adding new titles was a motivation for 82% of responding ARL institutions and 69% of the top-ranked ARL members. 69% of all the libraries surveyed and 86% of ARL libraries reportedly link to MOA in order to "provide text searchable alternative versions to supplement titles already held in the library's print collection." A number of librarians commented that the ability to access the collections remotely is valuable for student and faculty users, particularly where libraries are supporting a distributed learning curriculum. Only 4% of respondents said that "replac[ing] titles held in the library's print collection" was a motivation for providing MOA access.

Integration of MOA into library collections
We have taken the presence of MOA titles in OPAC records as one measure of the degree to which libraries conceive of the resource as an integral piece of their collections. Fourteen respondents reported that their libraries' OPACs provide links to individual titles in the MOA collection at present. Half of these were ARL member institutions (25% of the ARL members surveyed). Nine of the 14 libraries are at U.S. Ph.D.-granting institutions, one at a Master's university, two at undergraduate institutions, and two at universities outside North America. In the majority of libraries surveyed, access to the MOA collections is from a comprehensive electronic resources page, a subject-based list of digital resources, or course-specific lists maintained by the library.

We asked survey participants a series of questions about the implications of access to the MOA titles for the management of their libraries' print holdings. This part of the survey closely followed JSTOR's bound volume survey, but the responses diverged markedly from those submitted by JSTOR subscribers, as figure 4 illustrates below. Asked whether, "given the availability of the titles in the MOA collection," their libraries had moved bound volumes to remote storage, 6% respondents answered "yes," and another 6% answered that bound volumes had not been moved, but that there were plans to move them in the future. 78% reported that no items had been moved to remote storage and that their libraries had made no such plans. Although two respondents said their libraries had "entered into a group remote storage project with other institutions to consolidate . . . print collections," only one of these reported that MOA access had been a factor in the decision. Four percent noted future plans for a group storage arrangement, but 81% did not foresee any such coordination with other institutions. Only a single respondent reported that "bound volumes of titles included in the MOA collection" had been "discarded outright." A further 3% related that their libraries planned to discard some of these volumes in the future, but 85% responded that no bound volumes had been discarded in light of MOA accessibility and that there were no plans to do so.

Figure 4: MOA and JSTOR Results Compared

Another series of questions offered examples of more restrained possible actions affecting libraries' print holdings. Queried about "other cost or shelf-space saving solutions" developed "as a result of access to the MOA collection," participants were reluctant to allow MOA to influence their management of print materials. Five percent of all respondents answered that their libraries had "removed duplicate items" and 7% had plans to do so. Nine percent responded that their libraries had "stopped replacing lost or damaged print issues" of journals represented in MOA, and 11% more reported plans to stop. Fourteen percent said their institutions were planning to or had already discontinued purchasing microfilm backruns. Five percent of respondents said that their libraries have installed compact shelving (presumably reflecting a decrease in the priority afforded to accessibility of MOA titles in print), and 5% indicated plans to do so. The rate of positive responses to this series of questions was similar or lower for ARL institutions; however, these gave a significantly higher number of unequivocally negative responses ("no, and no plans…").

In their comments, a number of librarians indicated that their institutions have, in fact, withdrawn or remotely stored print materials that could be replaced with electronic versions, but that the MOA collections have not been factored into such decisions. That MOA's impact on collection management policies has not approached that of JSTOR is not consistent with the perceived usefulness of the MOA collections. Indeed, respondents praised MOA as a "tremendous resource," an "excellent and useful collection" that is "invaluable for small libraries," and a "fantastic service to the historical profession." Instead, librarians' relative tentativeness likely has to do with perceptions of the stability of the resource. Comments of some of the respondents suggest that MOA may not be widely viewed as a permanent digital repository. Ruth Dickstein, Subject Specialist for History and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona Library, wrote: "we are removing JSTOR titles, and could consider doing the same with the MOA titles, [but] just have never assumed that the MOA titles had the stability of always being available." Michael Stoller, Director of Collections & Research Services at the New York University Libraries expressed similar reservations:

We have treated Making of America as a supplement to our own holdings and not as a replacement for any locally-held resources. In future we might view MOA as a form of ready access to materials locally held offsite. But we are not presently inclined to view it as a 100% reliable digital archive, whose paper equivalents can or should be withdrawn from our collections.

In an August 2000 interview with RLG DigiNews, JSTOR's president, Kevin Guthrie, emphasized that his organization's decision-making and communication with stakeholders has at all times centered on JSTOR's core mission of establishing a trusted digital archive. JSTOR has vigorously cultivated relationships with libraries and sought to make its preservation policies clear to librarians. Although MOA has been an important testing ground for digital preservation techniques at both Cornell and Michigan, to date neither university has forcefully articulated its policies and practices regarding digital preservation of the MOA holdings. More active communication with librarians could help clarify MOA's long-term strategies. A few survey respondents proposed that MOA supply the usage statistics that commercial vendors typically make available to libraries; this and other services to libraries would enhance MOA's visibility.

As digital preservation and archiving projects multiply and evolve, standards and oversight mechanisms are emerging that will facilitate communication of preservation strategies (2). Such communication should be central to MOA's outreach to academic libraries as well as to other communities.

Interview with Anne Kenney, Wendy Lougee, and John Wilkin A number of respondents to our institutional use survey indicated that MOA would weigh more heavily in collection management decision-making if there were clearer assurance that these materials would be accessible for the long term. How would you characterize the commitment of the Cornell and University of Michigan libraries to maintaining this resource? Anne Kenney (MOA 1 Project Director, Cornell): Cornell University Library (CUL) is committed to maintaining and strengthening its digital holdings including the MOA collection. To date, this commitment has been de facto, but will be made explicit in the library's new Master Plan, which will be adopted by early spring. Over the past 5 years, CUL has actively developed its digital preservation capabilities to ensure the long-term accessibility of its digital content. Through an IMLS-funded initiative, the library developed a digital preservation strategy for its image-based collections and last year assumed long-term responsibility for the arXiv.org e-Print archive. The blueprint for creating a Central Depository for digital content will be completed within the next two months, with development planned for the summer and fall. Just recently Nancy McGovern has been appointed CUL's first Digital Preservation Officer, charged with developing digital preservation policies and coordinating various digital archiving efforts library-wide. Cornell Library has also participated heavily in research and development efforts focusing on digital preservation, through such projects as the Mellon E-Journal Archiving Project (Project Harvest), the Digital Libraries Initiative Phase 2 project (Project Prism), and the Risk Management Study on the effects of format migration. Because the online MOA collection serves our clientele so well, we will be moving the bound volumes comprising the collection to off-site storage over the next several years. Wendy Lougee (MOA 1 Project Director, University of Michigan): We have developed archiving procedures and policies (currently in draft and undergoing internal review) and are committed to sustaining our locally created digital collections. Current mechanisms include methods to ensure the longevity and long-term access to the digital master. Creation and conversion practices use standards-based methods and storage on media with long-term viability. Access systems, where possible, use the digital master as an access copy and rely on redundancy (storage and multiple locations) and frequent backups. We have recently adopted a policy to move our preservation reformatting to digital methods as a default method. Consequently, in the future we will be reviewing additional brittle and endangered volumes for digital conversion and utilizing similar methods. Since the original MOA project, we have made cataloging records (via ftp) available for all items included in the MOA collection to facilitate access at other institutions. What has been the approach to date to publicizing the MOA project, particularly with regard to establishing MOA's status as a stable, reliable resource? Do you envision new features or services that might increase MOA's value to its users or broaden its readership to new communities? What can MOA learn from other digital library projects, such as JSTOR, in this regard? Anne Kenney: This survey revealed some very interesting trends—institutional faith in JSTOR has steadily increased for good reasons but also because JSTOR is overt about its commitment to its customers. I believe that CUL could follow the lead of JSTOR and others in offering the same commitment to current and future customers—not just within the CUL community but beyond to the growing secondary clientele. In meeting the needs of the former, we can also serve the latter with a manageable overhead. We are particularly taken with the National Library of Australia's "Safekeeping Project" that is building a distributed and permanent collection of digital resources in digital preservation through negotiations with resource owners or their designees to provide long-term access to their material. Those resources for which safekeeping strategies have been put in place are marked on the PADI Web site. I also believe that in the next couple of years we will see various strategies evolve for developing the business case for underwriting the costs of digital archiving. CUL has already expended a great deal of time and money in the care and feeding of this resource and will continue to do so. The financial arrangements for doing so will inevitably change, however. The extent to which we integrate our holdings into the collections of other libraries will be closely monitored. The future will lie in greater inter-institutional dependencies for maintaining digital assets that are valued by all yet managed in a distributed manner. Wendy Lougee: Our publicity has conveyed information about stability and methods for long term access, as well as use and functionality. While we have not, thus far, advocated collection management decisions as a result of MOA, we anticipate that the planned digital registry (under development through the Digital Library Federation) would be an appropriate venue to communicate this information. Finally, can you describe how you perceive MOA's relationship with other digital library projects, and how you would like to see such relationships develop in the future? Is MOA involved in any plans to integrate access to separate digital collections, or other collaborative projects that would reduce redundancy among digital resources? What steps were taken in the development of MOA to provide for future interoperability with other databases? Anne Kenney: Wendy has already mentioned the DLF's registry initiative, which is being designed in part to reduce duplication of effort in digitization. Through various projects and initiatives—notably the Open Archives Initiative and collaborative efforts with other research institutions, in particular the Library of Congress and Michigan—Cornell is actively pursuing a program to integrate access across institutional boundaries. We are also intrigued by the suggestion of the survey respondents who asked whether we could provide them with statistical data covering their institution's use of MOA materials. John Wilkin (Head, Digital Library Production Service, University of Michigan): Formally, we are exploring integration of digital collections through a National Science Foundation grant with Cornell, Goettingen, and Michigan to extend the Dienst protocol to support full text access. Michigan's OAI metadata harvesting project (supported by Mellon) will bring together freely available digital collections. We have made MOA cataloging records available via ftp to other institutions for inclusion in local catalogs. Our local systems development using our Digital Library Extension Service (DLXS) incorporates support for cross-repository searching.

Footnotes
(1) Google and Altavista were searched for links to MOA, using the Michigan MOA URL and the two URLs for the Cornell MOA site in our search strings—for example a search for "link:moa.umdl.umich.edu/ -host:umich.edu" at Altavista yields links to the Michigan site, excluding links at the University of Michigan host. Links from academic library sites were selected "by hand" from the results. We compiled an email address list of individual librarians from information available at the library Web sites. (back)
(2) See for instance the draft report of the RLG/OCLC Working Group, Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository: Meeting the Needs of Research Resources (Mountain View, CA: RLG, 2001). (back)

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