The Who, What, and Why of Voluntary Validation

What does it mean to validate archived materials?

WEST physical validation includes two components: 

• • the proactive compilation and verification of completeness of the backfile in a single location

and 

• • the verification of the condition of the material. 

The effort put into verifying completeness and condition is balanced against the risk profile of the title. Materials considered to be at higher risk typically undergo physical validation before the materials can be added to the WEST Archives. This approach allows WEST members to spend more time and effort archiving higher risk titles, with less effort on lower risk titles.

Why validate?

Items in the WEST archive are classified into low, medium, and high risk level categories based on the availability and status of digital copies of the material. Low risk level materials have trusted digital copies. WEST does not require validation for these materials because the trusted digital copy could support creation of a replacement copy if the physical copy should prove missing or damaged. However, items that are deemed medium or high risk level have select electronic coverage (such as full text commercially available or abstracting or indexing) or no electronic coverage at all. In these cases WEST requires that these items be physically validated.

Validation instills confidence in the partners to know just what reasonable efforts have been made by the Archiver to secure a backfile that is as complete as possible and in good condition. WEST strives to archive the most complete copy of a journal backfile to ensure that the entirety of the print record is preserved and available for current and future scholars. WEST categorizes some items as medium and high risk level materials 

Who Validates?

As mentioned above, WEST requires physical validation of medium and high risk level archived materials, and does not require validation of low risk level archived materials. However, we recognize that some Archive Holders physically validate low risk materials as a matter of routine in certain standard collection management workflows, essentially elevating the quality of the archive by physically confirming what materials are held. These activities are highly valuable not only to the local institution but to the wider shared print community, and serve to make the WEST archives more trustworthy.

While WEST does not require that information about these actions be added to disclosure records, Archivers that do voluntarily validate their low risk level materials are highly encouraged to record this in their disclosure records to support public understanding about the state of the WEST archives. To this end, WEST has created Guidelines for Voluntary Validation of Low Risk Level Materials that detail common workflows for validation along with a modified framework for validation and disclosure that acknowledges the voluntary nature of this work and resourcing considerations Archivers who engage in this work may face.

Do You Validate?

For some libraries, local workflows and guidelines might already align with WEST validation, and you may already be validating without realizing it. If you believe that your library’s practices may already include validation, we encourage you to disclose this validation to help us ensure the accuracy and completeness of the collective collection for the scholarly community now, and for generations to come!