Rozz Evans Collection Development Librarian Institute of Education, University of London spoke about the development content and future plans of Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA)

1. Digital Education
Resource Archive (DERA)
Rozz Evans
Collection Development Librarian
Newsam Library &
Archives

2. What is DERA?
A permanent digital archive of largely born digital document-based
publications from Government and related (publicly funded) bodies
selected for their relevance to the subject of Education
http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/
It is *not* a website archive
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3. Why did we need to develop DERA?
•Increase in electronic-only publications – from late 90’s accelerated rapidly
•Link Rot!
•Permanent removal/disappearance/loss of documents
All meant that the integrity and completeness of one of our most
important collections was at serious risk...
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4. How did we do it?
Staff
Developments in customisable software and work across the HE sector
(SHERPA, JISC etc)
Institutional support

5. Progress
2008/2009 work began in earnest. The idea of DERA was born March 2010.
Went live February 2011.
E-prints repository software – customised by Bernard Scaife (Systems
Librarian, with the support of University of London Computer Centre (ULCC))
Technical background: Scaife, B (2011) From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary:
Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA)
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue67/scaife/
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6. Copyright
Crown and Parliamentary material - Open Government Licence/ Open
Parliament Licence
Other organisations – approached individually for permissions. 99% positive
responses.
Some difficulty where copyright on e.g. DFE Research Reports still rests with
individual author or institutions.
Notice and Take Down policy & Due Diligence
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7. Why is it so important?
Permanence of link
Unique documents
Includes range of publications not collected by any other libraries (including
the British Library)
Freely available, searchers using Google etc will find DERA documents
Metadata is open licence and downloadable via OAI-PMH
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8. Key factors for success
Discrete subject area and clear definition of what is to be included
Right mix of staff involvement – collections, technical, cataloguing
Commitment to principles of preservation and access
Institutional support
Collaboration from ULCC
Critical mass of material from depositing bodies + interest/support/copyright
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9. What is there and where does it come
from?
Born digital documents selected by Official Publications librarian &
Parliamentary material from Official Publications Online (OPO)
Deposits of digital publications archives from organisations which have
closed/changed remit or who cannot preserve their publications themselves
for whatever reasons
Includes: BECTA, LLUK (closed)
LSC and predecessor organisations FEFC etc (now YPLA and SFA)
GTCE (due for closure Summer 2012)

10. Recent developments
POPE (Preserving Official Publications in Education) - a
JISC funded project to catalogue and deposit into DERA 5000+ documents
published pre-2009 – due to complete end of February 2012
Project website/blog: http://ioepope.wordpress.com/
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11. Future plans
Sustainability
Investigation into formats
Possible expansion into other kinds of organisation
Enhancement of features
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12. Users
Original purpose – preservation and access
Statistics indicate increasing usage
Known users include HE researchers, teachers, charities, government
departments, librarians etc
Future plan to get user feedback etc in order to improve
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13. Useful information
Institute of Education Official Publications Collection
http://www.ioe.ac.uk/services/545.html
SHERPA www.sherpa.ac.uk
Directory of Open Access Repositories www.opendoar.org
JISC http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/digitalrepositories.aspx
Open Government Licence - The National Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/
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14. Keeping up-to-date with DERA
progress
Newsam News (Library Blog) http://newsamnews.ioe.ac.uk/
Twitter @IOELibrary
r.evans@ioe.ac.uk
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