Mike Beazley has published "Eprints Institutional Repository Software: A Review" in latest issue of Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.

Here's an excerpt:

Setting up an institutional repository (IR) can be a daunting task. There are many software packages out there, some commercial, some open source, all of which offer different features and functionality. This article will provide some thoughts about one of these software packages: Eprints. Eprints is open-source, and the software is easy to modify. This presents clear advantages for institutions will smaller budgets and that have programmers on staff.

Installation and initial configuration are straightforward and once the IR is up and running, users can easily upload documents by filling out a simple web form. Eprints is an excellent choice for any institution looking to get an IR up and running quickly and easily, although it is less clear that an institution with an existing IR based on another software package should migrate to Eprints.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

There are now over 1,000 known DSpace repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the DuraSpace announcement

The DSpace user community has reached a major milestone. There are now over 1000 known instances of DSpace installed in almost 100 different countries worldwide. DSpace continues to be the most popular repository solution, with well over a third of the known institutional repositories using the DSpace software. Each month over the last year, the DSpace registry has added between 20-30 new repositories. Check out "Who's Using DSpace" to see the complete list. . . .

Over the last year, DSpace repositories were launched in 25 new countries, including: Bulgaria, Cameroon, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malawi, Malta, Mozambique, Nepal, Poland, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Senegal, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Tansania, Uruguay, Zambia.

The countries that had the largest increase in the number of DSpace repositories were: Japan +33, Taiwan +28, USA +16, Spain +13, Brazil +12, Ecuador +11, China +10, Portugal +10, Ukraine +10, South Africa +8, Thailand +7, Vietnam +7.

Also of interest is the number of highly ranked DSpace repositories listed in the January 2011 edition of the Ranking Web of World Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the DuraSpace announcement

In overall, DSpace’s presence among the top 100 listed repositories has grown tremendously, with 51 repositories listed now, compared to 41 in July 2010, 45 in January 2010 and 43 in January 2009.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Presentations from the SPARC 2010 Digital Repositories Meeting are now available.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Reputation management systems," "new spin on Open Access," "stretching knowledge bases," "exposing reality," and "valuing knowledge exchange at the institutional level" were just a few of the ways participants in the SPARC 2010 Digital Repositories Meeting expressed their vision for advancing repository advocacy into the fuller fabric of the Open Access movement. The sentiment is one outcome of the gathering, jointly hosted by SPARC, SPARC Japan/NII, and SPARC Europe, in Baltimore on November 8 & 9, 2010. SPARC has today released summaries, slides, and video from the event.

The SPARC digital repositories meetings have played an integral part in advancing the potential of open online repositories to expand the dissemination of scholarship and transform scholarly communication. First held in 2004, the meeting is regularly hosted in the UK or Europe, Japan, and North America, draws hundreds of participants from around the globe, and has helped set the stage for key developments over the past six years. This time, participants indicated the need for a broader meeting and discussion, which highlight repositories in the full Open Access context.

"Repositories are core components of the Open Access movement," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. "They’re deeply integrated with policy moves and at the forefront of managing Open Access to materials above and beyond the scholarly literature—not to mention author rights management and other aspects. It just makes sense that conversations about repository advocacy take place alongside moves to create policies. SPARC's next biennial meeting, in 2012, will aim to meet this need, and we look forward to working with our members to figure out the best approach."

The 2010 meeting set forth to explore four key trends: Repository-based publishing strategies, Global repository networks, Open data, and Making the case for financial sustainability. These panel discussions were supplemented with an Innovation Fair, where new technologies, strategies, and approaches were highlighted, and a Sponsor Showcase.

| Digital Scholarship |

David E. Millard et al. have self-archived "MePrints: Building User Centred Repositories" in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

Teaching and Learning Repositories learning from the best practices of Web 2.0. Over this time we have successfully deployed a number of innovative repositories, including Southampton University EdShare, The Language Box, The HumBox, Open University’s LORO and Worcester Learning Box. A key part of this work has been the development of an extension for the EPrints repository platform, called MePrints, that enables configurable profile pages, and works alongside existing extensions such as IRStats and SNEEP in order to give users live feeds about repository events that matter to them. Through these deployments we have discovered that more sophisticated profile pages give users a home within a repository, act as a focus for their work, and help them feel more ownership of the work that they deposit. This increases the visibility of the repository and encourages more deposits.

| Digital Scholarship |

An institutional repository is a digital repository specific to a single institution that contains diverse types of digital works that deal with the disciplines associated with that institution.

Version three of the Institutional Repository Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship as an XHTML website with live links to many included works. It primarily includes published articles, books, and technical reports. A limited number of conference papers and unpublished e-prints are also included. All included works are in English. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

The bibliography has the following sections (all sections have been updated):

1 General
2 Country and Regional Institutional Repository Surveys
3 Multiple-Institution Repositories
4 Specific Institutional Repositories
5 Institutional Repository Digital Preservation Issues
6 Institutional Repository Library Issues
7 Institutional Repository Metadata Issues
8 Institutional Repository Open Access Policies
9 Institutional Repository R&D Projects
10 Institutional Repository Research Studies
11 Institutional Repository Software
12 Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Institutional Repositories
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author

The following recent Digital Scholarship publication may also be of interest:

• Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (a paperback, a PDF file, and an XHTML website)

See also: Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications.

The University of Rochester has released IR+ 2.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The new version has many new features and updates. These include:

• OAI-PMH harvestable
• Dublin Core mapping features for Identifiers and contributors
• Improved batch metadata manipulation – automated re-indexing enhancements (changing control lists forces re-indexing of all items that use changed data)
• Sponsor browsing / statistics
• Paging and Sorting for contributor pages
• Improved Search Engine Optimization(SEO) for better indexing of researcher pages and content within the repository
• Researcher page interface enhancements
• Content type listing and filtering at the repository and collection levels
• Content type counts at the repository and collection levels
• Increased download information and removal options for more accurate download counts
• Updated Help, Installation and User manuals
• RSS feeds for Collections/Contributor Pages
• Upgraded pdf/word/excel/power point text extraction libraries
• Updated user account management features
• Submission performance enhancements
• Improved home page module placement
• Improved change tracking

| Digital Scholarship |

The New Review of Academic Librarianship has published a special issue on dissemination models in scholarly communication. All of the articles are open access.

Here's a selection of articles

• Authors' Awareness and Attitudes Toward Open Access Repositories
• Case Study: Re-Engineering an Institutional Repository to Engage Users
• The Economists Online Subject Repository—Using Institutional Repositories as the Foundation For International Open Access Growth
• From Service Providers to Content Producers: New Opportunities For Libraries in Collaborative Open Access Book Publishing
• Institutional Repository Interaction With Research Users: A Review of Current Practice
• Open Access and Humanities and Social Science Monograph Publishing
• Project Management and Institutional Repositories: A Case Study at University College Dublin Library

| Digital Scholarship |

The SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) project has released a series of tutorial videos.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

1. An Introduction to SWORD: Gives an overview of SWORD, the rationale behind its creation, and details of the first three funded SWORD projects
2. SWORD Use Cases: Provides an introduction to use cases, and examines some of the use cases that SWORD can be used for
3. How SWORD Works: A high level overview of the SWORD protocol, lightly touching on a few technical details in order to explain how it works
4. SWORD Clients: The reasons for needing SWORD clients are shown, followed by a tour of some of the current SWORD clients
5. Create Your Own SWORD Client: An overview of the EasyDeposit SWORD client creation toolkit, including the chance to try it out

Digital videos from the Repository Fringe 2010 meeting are now available.

JISC has released SWORD v2.0: Deposit Lifecycle.

Here's an excerpt:

SWORD is a hugely successful JISC project which has kindled repository interoperability and built a community around the software and the problem space. It explicitly deals only with creating new repository resources by package deposit a simple case which is at the root of its success but also its key limitation. This next version of SWORD will push the standard towards supporting full repository deposit lifecycles by using update, retrieve and delete extensions to the specification. This will enable the repository to be integrated into a broader range of systems in the scholarly environment, by supporting an increased range of behaviours and use cases.

Ann Hanlon and Marisa Ramirez have self-archived their presentation "Asking for Permission: A Survey of Copyright Workflows for Institutional Repositories" in DigitalCommons@CalPoly.

Here's an excerpt:

Most survey respondents reported providing mediated deposit (material is deposited on behalf of the author by a third party, usually someone associated with the IR), whether it is completely mediated by the library or whether the author, in partnership with the library, deposits their work. The only respondents to report author self-deposit as the primary method of IR deposit were in Australia and Europe.

DuraSpace has announced its new Registered Service Provider Program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization announced its new Registered Service Provider Program to establish partnerships with companies that provide support services to institutions using the DSpace and Fedora digital repository software.

The new program will establish an network of service providers offering a range of services including customer support, technical consulting, software development, and systems integration. The program will benefit universities, libraries, museums, research institutions, and others that require support in building or maintaining repository-based systems built with DSpace, Fedora, and related open source and commercial technologies.

Registered Service Providers will be easily identified. They will be featured on the DuraSpace web site (duraspace.org) and relevant project websites, with contact information and a profile of their service offerings. Providers will also exhibit their affiliation with DuraSpace by displaying the special DuraSpace Service Provider Logo on their marketing materials and websites.

Registered Service Providers share the DuraSpace commitment to ensuring that current and future generations have access to our collective digital heritage. Service Providers are active participants in open source software communities and are committed to providing expertise and technical consulting to enable customers to achieve their goals with open technologies.