In July 2006, the University of Houston Libraries released their UH Libraries Strategic Directions, 2006-2010. This planning document is always mentioned in the UH Libraries' recruitment ads: "The UH Libraries have adopted and are implementing a set of strategic directions . . . [URL] and we seek individuals who will be interested in advancing this plan." Like all such planning documents, it represents the library's aspirations, and, of course, it is unrealistic to expect that all such aspirations will be realized.

This post examines the "Enrich Support for Scholarly Communication" section of the document, an area that my job was focused on when I worked there until my November 2006 resignation as Assistant Dean for Digital Library Planning and Development. Based solely on public information (and thus incomplete information), it asks the question: "What progress has been made in scholarly communication support since the strategic directions document was released?" For some objectives, it is not possible to make any assessment because there is no available public information about them.

The first goal is "Expand efforts to build and preserve digital collections," and it includes items such as digitizing Special Collections materials, developing a secure institutional repository, participating in digital preservation efforts such as LOCKSS and Portico, and participating in the Texas Digital Library.

It appears that little visible progress has been made in these areas. No new public digital Special Collections exhibits have been made available (back-room digitization efforts likely continued), there is no public institutional repository, and, while the Libraries participate in the Texas Digital Library project, none of their digital materials appear to be available on its Website. The planning efforts of the institutional repository committee that I chaired, whose first steps included producing ARL's Institutional Repositories SPEC Kit 291, do not seem to have been followed up. The Libraries do not participate in Portico, but do participate in LOCKSS.

The second goal is "Advocate for open access in order to develop collections in a cost-efficient manner and increase the reach of University-generated scholarship," and it includes items such as selecting open access materials, acting as a faculty/student resource about digital rights, acting as a digital rights advocate with publishers, and providing tools such as digital/institutional repositories and open access journal platforms.

Again, little progress appears to have been made. The Libraries do have a list of open access materials. The scholarly communication projects started by a committee that I chaired appear to have been abandoned since my and Adrian Ho's departures. The detailed 2005 Transforming Scholarly Communication website still exists, but it does not appear to be accessible unless you do a site search for it and it does not seem to have been maintained. The 2006 Transforming Scholarly Communication Symposium, which was conceived as an annual event, is also inaccessible short of a site search, and it does not appear to have been held in subsequent years. The Transforming Scholarly Communication Weblog, which was started in 2005, has been deleted. There does not appear to be any general information about scholarly communication topics such as author rights or the open access movement on the Website to substitute for these inaccessible pages. While the Libraries were a pioneer in open access journal publishing with the 1989 launch of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review (ceased in 2000), there appears to be no recent activity in the open access publishing area.

The third goal is "Collaborate with communities of practice within the University to help scholars make their work accessible and improve the world-wide visibility of the University’s scholarship." Aside from another repository objective (that mentions ETDs) and a self-archiving assistance objective, the objectives in this section don't lend themselves to public assessment. A 2007 Electronic Theses & Dissertations Pilot Project using DigiTool was launched in 2007 with two UH colleges participating, but it is unclear what has happened subsequently. The Libraries are not listed as participants in the Texas Digital Library's ETD component in a presentation on that topic at the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries 2009 conference. There is no evidence of self-archiving assistance.

To summarize:

• The UH Libraries have not made any new digital exhibits (or any other digitized material) publicly available since at least November 2006. There is no visible evidence on the Internet that its DigiTool digital asset management system is being used for anything other than an ETD test.
• The UH Libraries do not have an operational institutional repository.
• Although the Libraries published one of the first open access journals and one of the first open access books, they are not currently publishing any open access journals or books.
• Initial efforts to educate the university community about scholarly communication issues through a symposium, Weblog, and Website appear to have been abandoned. There is no visible evidence of any other initiatives in this area.
• Although the UH Libraries have been a founding member of the Texas Digital Library (TDL) since 2005, there is no visible evidence that they are actively using its electronic journal, ETD, faculty directory, institutional repository, research wiki, scholarly blog, or Shibboleth services. It is not included in the test phases of the TDL Preservation Network. However, the UH Libraries do support TDL as a founding member, paying $100,000 per year and a "funding commitment for two local full-time employees," which is an important revenue stream for TDL.

Recently, the Libraries have hired a Digital Projects Program Director, and, hopefully, this may move forward some of the objectives in this section of the strategic directions.

Of course, this examination of one of four goals in the strategic planning document doesn't mean that progress hasn't been made in the other goals; however, it appears that the "Enrich Support for Scholarly Communication" goal has not been a major focus of activity since 2006, at least not in ways that are publicly visible.

1/8/10 Update: During Fall 2009, the University of Houston Libraries rolled out the University of Houston Digital Library, which is built on CONTENTdm. As of today, it contains around 1,050 image files.

The Libraries have removed their late 1980s and early 1990s digital publishing projects (Public-Access Computer Systems News, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, and the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography) and mailing lists (PACS-L and PACS-P) from their Digital Projects page. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review and the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography are still accessible via the Libraries' online catalog; the rest are only accessible by using Google or a similar search engine.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under University of Houston Libraries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.