Using the ISSN Portal to check the Status of a library's Journal Collections regarding Digital Preservation

Keepers Registry (https://keepers.issn.org) is the only service tracking the archiving actions of digital and digitized journals. The service has been managed by the ISSN International Center since 2019. Keepers Registry aggregates data provided by 16 partner archiving agencies around the world. It provides an overview of the conservation status of around 84,700 journal titles (August 2023).

The ISSN International Center has developed a service associated with Keepers Registry that enables librarians responsible for collections to download journal metadata via an Excel-formatted list and retrieve information on the extent of preservation of these titles. The data includes the names of the preservation agencies and, for each agency, the years covered by preservation in relation to the years of publication, an assessment of the completeness of the content archived by agency and the publishers involved. With these data in hand, together with a diagnosis of ISSN quality, librarians can check whether their journals are partially or fully archived, or not archived at all. They can choose to cooperate with these archiving agencies, taking into account the correspondence between the titles for which they wish to maintain access and the titles archived by these agencies. This service can be particularly important when access to journals after subscription termination cannot be negotiated with publishers. It can also help guide weeding projects for printed documents.