Institutional Repositories: An OverviewDavid SeamanExecutive Director, Digital Library Federation

JISC Programme Meeting7 July 2004, Brighton

Digital Library Federationhttp://www.diglib.org/ Thirty-three members – major academic and

national libraries, including The British Library; four allies (CNI; RLG; OCLC; LANL)

Created in 1995 by directors of US research libraries; fills a need not simply met by larger library organizations: focus exclusively on DL needs and strategies for large libraries

Be nimble, agile, collaborative Practical and strategic areas of activity

DLF Work -- backgroundUSER SERVICES Dimensions and use of the scholarly information

environment www.diglib.org/pubs/scholinfo Learning technologies and courseware integration Distributed single collection of our own material

METADATA STANDARDS Open Archives Initiative support (with CNI) METS (Metadata Transmission Standard)

DLF Work -- backgroundRESOURCE MANAGEMENT XML format for license content Registry of Digital Masters (with OCLC)

PRODUCTION Production standards and benchmarks

PRESERVATION Journals preservation –

www.diglib.org/preserve/ejp.htm Global Digital Format Registry

Definition from The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper

“They capture and preserve the intellectual output of university communities… [and] provide a central component in reforming scholarly communication by stimulating innovation in a disaggregated publishing structure.”

“They serve as tangible indicators of an institution’s quality, thus increasing its visibility, prestige, and public value.”

Potential ContentsArticles, reprints, technical reports, working

papers, conference papers, dissertations and theses, datasets, image files, audio and video files, e-books, courseware output, learning objects, faculty archives, departmental archives

Both raw and cooked – finished articles and the datasets built as part of the research that leads to the article’s conclusions

Driving forces Libraries ambitious to extend their traditional roles

and skills into new realm University administrations Realization of what we can do now that we could

not do “pre-digital” Vision of the intellectual and pedagogical potential

of open access Exploitation of intellectual assets (academic

capitalism)

Contributing streams of endeavor Public access (Sabo Bill; Wellcome Trust) Metadata harvesting -- OAI Experience with digital library collections Individual faculty digital archives Digital preservation and curation Emulation, conversion, migration roles Cheaper storage Permanent identifier schemes

Main Players #1

DSpace (MIT) [http://www.dspace.org] Eprints (Southampton)

[http://software.eprints.org]. Berkeley Electronic Press

[http://www.bepress.com] -- University of California's eScholarship Repository [http://repositories.cdlib.org]

Fedora (Cornell/Virginia) [http://www.fedora.info/ ]

Main Players #2 CURL/JISC Project SHERPA (Securing a

Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) [http://www.sherpa.ac.uk]

The Academic Research in the Netherlands Online (ARNO)

Local systems : Ohio State University (OSU) Knowledge Bank [http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/Kbinfo]

Digital Commons (BePress/ProQuest) “Libraries that use Digital Commons will be

able to offer key services such as full-text searching, export to XML, full support for OAI, and personalized email notification for new updates.”

“ProQuest can provide a head start on content by immediately loading all of an academic library’s dissertation content – creating an immediate critical mass.”

“University of Pennsylvania and University of New Brunswick are early adopters.”

DSPACE “DSpace is a groundbreaking digital

repository for the digital intellectual output of a university. It is designed to capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute research material….” DSpace Elevator Pitch

Open source; HP/MIT Libraries collaboration Community/department model Separates bit storage from usability at its core

Recent Developments• “Google Teams Up With 17 Colleges to Test

Searches of Scholarly Materials.” (DSpace)• http://chronicle.com/free/

2004/04/2004040901n.htm • BePress/ProQuest commercial package• Elsevier’s open access promise specifically

permits institutional repository deposit (and puts the ball firmly in our court.)

Technical Challenges Many formats – migration/emulation and

documentation needs Little metadata beyond that provided by the

submitter Bulk Access control to non-public content Costly promise of permanence Interoperability

Cultural issues Current practice of putting material on

personal websites does not mean the same as adding your material to a system that declares it to be an “asset” for exploitation

Ownership issues The curse of over-promising Last Year’s Thing/Not Ready for Prime Time The roadblock we don’t see (assumptions)

Cultural issues “The greatest obstacle to any change in the

fundamental structure of scholarly communication lies in the inertia of the traditional publishing paradigm. And nowhere is that inertia more profound—and understandable, given the professional stakes—than amongst academic faculty.” Rick Johnson, SPARC

Cultural issues Current academic measurement and rewards

system not in sync with open access, especially for “uncooked” material.

Disparity of perceived need by discipline Institutional repositories not driven by broad

groundswell of faculty demand Faculty often not used to being “asset

producers” for anyone but themselves

Conclusions Great appetite and growing momentum from

libraries and administrators to assume the burden and reap the benefits of institutional repositories

Uneven demand and comfort level from faculty Critical need to engage now in the cultural

issues and move implications of the repository into promotion, hiring, and evaluation.