The University of Houston Libraries published one of the
first open access peer-reviewed journals published on the
Internet, The Public Access-Computer Systems Review.
Established in 1989, the journal's last issue was published
in 1998. It had over 4.2 million Gopher or Web file requests
from January 1994 through December 2006.

Today, the University of Houston Libraries have deleted this
open access journal from their website. The only remnant of
the digital version of the journal is an online catalog
record, whose link is inoperative. The current Dean of the
University of Houston Libraries, Dana C. Rooks, served as an
editor of the journal.

The University of Houston Libraries have also deleted the
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography archive. The UH
Libraries published this updated digital book from 1996
through 2006. The only remnant of the of the digital book is
an online catalog record, whose link is inoperative. From
October 1996 through December 2006, this digital book had
over 6.6 million Web file requests.

The University of Houston Libraries have also deleted
Public-Access Computer Systems News. The UH Libraries
published this digital newsletter from 1990 though 1995.
There is no catalog record for this newsletter. Both Dean
Dana Rooks and Senior Associate Dean Linda Thompson were
editors of this newsletter.

The University of Houston Libraries have also deleted the
home pages for two early Internet discussion lists, PACS-L
and PACS-P.

Preliminary searching in Google suggests that, in spite of a
copyright agreement that permitted libraries from freely
archiving The Public Access-Computer Systems Review, none
have done so. Perhaps they expected that the University of
Houston Libraries would perpetually archive a digital
journal that they published.

Although there appears to be no library archive of the The
Public Access-Computer Systems Review, print versions of
volumes 1-5 are still available in some libraries. These
print versions were published by LITA to meet the needs of
readers with limited Internet access. A full archive of the
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, including
post-UH versions, is available on Digital Scholarship
(http://digital-scholarship.org/sepb/sepb.html), and it will
remain so for as long as that website is functional.

--

Best Regards,
Charles

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
Publisher, Digital Scholarship
http://digital-scholarship.org/

A Look Back at 21 Years as an Open Access Publisher
http://digital-scholarship.org/cwb/21/21years.htm