Irish University Association Supporting Digital Preservation via Portico

Portico is pleased to announce that the seven universities under the Irish Universities Association (IUA) have begun participation in the Portico archive. Established in 1997, the IUA seeks to formulate and pursue collective policies and actions on behalf of its member libraries:

• Trinity College Dublin
• National University of Ireland, Galway
• University College Cork
• Dublin City University
• University College Dublin
• University of Limerick
• National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Through its support of the Portico archive the Irish Research Electronic Library (IReL) program - a national initiative under the aegis of the IUA and Science Foundation Ireland designed to provide online access to thousands of quality peer-reviewed research publications across a range of disciplines - incorporates long-term digital preservation and access protection for a growing number of titles.

Robin Adams, Librarian of Trinity College Dublin and Secretary of the IUA Librarians' Group described the decision to participate in Portico as a "cost effective means for the IUA to address digital preservation responsibilities and to protect the substantial investment made in the IReL which provides an internationally competitive research infrastructure to Ireland's universities." Eileen Fenton, Executive Director of Portico noted "We are pleased the IUA has chosen to support Portico's community-based approach to digital preservation. The IUA's decision highlights the benefits of sharing the costs of 'digital preservation insurance' across an international and growing community of libraries and scholarly publishers working cooperatively to accomplish robust digital preservation."

The IUA libraries join more than 400 libraries from 11 countries in supporting Portico and digital preservation. The complete list of participating libraries is available at http://www.portico.org/about/participating_libraries.html. For more information about Portico participation, please send an email to participation@portico.org. More information about the IUA is available at http://www.iua.ie/.