The New Wave? Subscription Archives

Customers have been pushing the legal publishers of annual publication editions and online services to create “archival” versions of the publications. The first one I have seen is

Martin’s Archival Criminal Code from Canada Law Book.

From the description:

Martin’s Archival Criminal Code is a unique and convenient online resource that offers you easy access to fifty years of the Criminal Code and commentary in one place. This archival collection from 1955 to the present will enable you to access the Criminal Code at a specific point in time.

It looks like a good idea, and I am interested to know if anyone has tried this out yet? Point-in-time research would be handy for anyone doing historical criminal research.

But I wonder if this is really the type of archival product customers are looking for? Once upon a time, libraries had various paper subscriptions. When a subscription was cancelled, the library still owned the copies it had purchased up until that point. With the rise of electronic subscriptions, if a library or law firm cancels a subscription it loses access to the entire product. In other words, the documents and information are really being leased, not purchased. Therefore, the push is to have an “archival” version of the product made available in a CD format on a periodic basis (say, once a year) so that the customer has something tangible if the subscription is not continued down the road.

Perhaps I am just hung up on semantics. I am not sure how this electronic version of Martin’s Criminal Code (published in paper) could be “archival”. Perhaps I wouldn’t have this problem if it were called “Martin’s Criminal Code: The Electronic Archives”.