In an October 2015 blog post CRL suggested that the community "work with trusted digital repositories like CLOCKSS, Portico, and other digital preservation efforts to strategically expand their title holdings, and provide appropriate redundancy for key at-risk titles." In the last ten years the persistence of digital resources has become an urgent concern of research libraries. As a result some major building blocks for the infrastructure of digital preservation have now been put in place: digital repositories like Portico, CLOCKSS and Scholars Portal. These now provide independent archiving of journal content from large academic and scientific publishers like Elsevier, Springer and Wiley.

In recent years Portico has expanded its coverage of smaller electronic publishers: At the end of 2015, one half of all publishers archiving journal content in Portico were in this category. While this is a significant development, much work remains to be done. Important electronic journal and e-book content is still "elusive" and at risk of “going dark.”  

Pursuing the "Long Tail" is the first in a series of four CRL webinars that will examine the benefits, capabilities and possibilities of the Portico digital preservation service. The webinar on February 24 will examine Portico's priorities and targets for growth, and explore how to better align those with the priorities of CRL member libraries.Subsequent webinars will examine tools for measuring Portico content in comparison with libraries' subscribed holdings; new types of scholarly research content and practices; and how Portico's D-Collections work. 

Featured presentations:

• Portico Growth and Small Publishers – Stephanie Orphan, Director of Publisher Relations, Portico
• What is the Corpus of E-Journal Content to Preserve? – Amy J. Kirchoff, Archive Service Product Manager, Portico
• Prioritizing further growth -- Kate Wittenberg, Managing Director of Portico
• Discussion: Ways CRL libraries could help prioritize further additions to Portico

NOTE: In response to a question from the webinar discussion, Amy Kirchoff of Portico provided supplemental information comparing archived title coverage (see attached spreadsheet). It shows what titles are not archived in Portico, CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, or JSTOR, compared to the total number of journals listed by CrossRef. This can provide a basis for further discussion of what is most important to CRL libraries.

Subsequent webinars will examine tools for measuring Portico content in comparison with libraries' subscribed holdings; new types of scholarly research content and practices; and how Portico's D-Collections work. 

CRL hosts webinars throughout the year. Participation is open to all librarians, staff, and faculty at CRL member institutions. Most are recorded and available for later access. Additional information on accessing webinars can be found under Membership.