Portico Joins Ranks of Elsevier Archiving Agents

Due to a recently signed agreement, Portico will provide long-term preservation of e-journals published by Elsevier.

Archival preservation ranks high among concerns of scientific researchers and academic libraries, and Elsevier has taken a leadership role in addressing the issue. Elsevier was the first publisher to sign a preservation agreement with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the Dutch national library. That KB agreement resembles Elsevier’s agreement with Portico in that, as an official archive, Portico commits to permanent preservation.

“We are excited about the opportunities Portico offers,” commented Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President with Elsevier. “They understand the concerns of publishers and librarians, and we are confident they have a long-term, viable solution to a critical issue.” Based in New Jersey, Portico is part of Ithaka, a not-for-profit company which also provides the JSTOR backfile program for scholarly journals. Besides receiving support via publisher and library fees, Portico has received Library of Congress funding.

 www.portico.org

Getting Answers at Elsevier

Quickly find the right person at Elsevier by visiting Contacts Finder for Librarians. It is free to use and may be found in the librarians area of Elsevier.com.

Contacts Finder allows anyone to look up staff they already know or search by form to find who can best answer a particular question. Searching by location, library type, and product topic returns relevant names from Elsevier's sales, sales support, training and marketing, library relations, technical support and customer service departments.

Contacts Finder for Librarians was developed last year in response to customer feedback which indicated a need for more direct and intuitive access to Elsevier's global network of sales and support staff. Contacts Finder for Librarians went live in September 2005.

 www.elsevier.com/contacts/librarians

The Latest Scoop on Scopus

Scopus has joined forces with RefWorks, the Web-based bibliographic tool, so researchers can use both resources without logging in and out and interrupting their work. “[Users] can simply click between the two services,” said Tina Long, RefWorks Vice President of Strategic Development and Sales. Response to the integration of the services has been positive. “This is an extremely exciting breakthrough,” commented Marshall Clinton, Director of Information Technology Services at the University of Toronto Library. ”This integration is proof that researchers can achieve real time savings when vendors cooperate.”