Portico: An Electronic Archiving Service

The work of the academy ? research and teaching ? is not possible without reliable access to the accumulated scholarship of the past. One component of this scholarly record, academic journals, is increasingly electronic ? and fragile ? and its future accessibility is a growing concern. The recent statement "Urgent Action Needed to Preserve Scholarly Electronic Journals" endorsed by leading libraries and organizations such as ARL, ALCTS and others underscores the urgency of this community need. But the scale and complexity of the technology infrastructure, specialized expertise and quality control processes necessary to preserve electronic resources exceeds that which can be supported by any individual library or institutional budget. This presentation will provide a brief history of Portico, the not-for-profit electronic archiving service developed in response to the library community's need for a robust, reliable means to preserve electronic scholarly journals. Portico was initiated by JSTOR and has been developed with the initial support of Ithaka, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Library of Congress. Portico's mission is to preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that these materials remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students. In addition to an overview of the Portico service and access model developed with input from publishers and libraries, the presentation will include an update on library and publisher participation and the status of Portico's archival operations