Passive data acquisition

An archive can be built up passively accepting documents submitted by the publishers. Thereby, also closed-access material could be included. At the same time legal issues concerning the Copyright are inherently tackled, since close contact to the publisher exists.

Following this so-called "push"-principle, two different types of data acquisition can be discerned, namely

• donations and
• deposit regulations.

On the one hand, publishers can voluntarily take up contact themselves. Relying on donations, however, could turn out not to be a prosperous, let alone comprehensive approach to take. This is due to the fact, that most publishers will be rather reluctant in handing in their works, if they do not see an immediate gain in it. After all, preparing the documents for delivery involves caring for their consistency, compiling the metadata, and possibly other tasks. Thus, this method is rather conceivable as an add-on.

Alternatively, submissions could be solicited or even forced provided an appropriate framework. Concerning a national archive a legal basis is required similar to the deposit law for conventional publications in order to oblige the publishers to deliver their works.

The situation is different for companies and smaller scale initiatives in general. In principle, a duty to deliver certain documents could be implemented in the organisation. Yet, if the repository ranks as a rather popular service it is likely that employees file their documents unsolicitly.

This form of a deposit collection shifts the responsibility for consistency of the collection items to the publishers themselves (cf. the profile of Die Deutsche Bibliothek in Section 3.4). The deposit of a consistent collection item can be demanded, encoded in a specific format with all components being in a defined structure. Thereby, the integration of the document in archival processes is considerably facilitated.

Additionally, the declaration of metadata can be asked of the publishers. Various entries of metadata are conceivable, providing background to the document, structural information, references and further notes. Besides this descriptive and structural functionality, also administrative items could be included, that, e.g., support a long-term preservation strategy (cf. Section 2.4) or that are necessary for rights management (cf. Section 2.6).

Yet, passive data acquisition is limited to the documents publishers deliver, whether they do it of their own free choice or whether forced by regulations in this respect. For an archive with a rather small scope, this approach is adequate. However, it could turn out to be insufficient for initiatives having very comprehensive philosophies. For instance, national archives should not only focus on high quality documents created by a defined set of publishers satisfying specific requirements. In the future, works of average people could be considered very rich sources of information. Those documents, however, can only be efficiently captured by gathering them actively.