Category: Digital Repositories

"HathiTrust Libraries Propose to Retain More Than 16 Million Volumes in Shared Print Program"

HathiTrust has released "HathiTrust Libraries Propose to Retain More Than 16 Million Volumes in Shared Print Program."

Here's an excerpt:

Fifty HathiTrust member libraries have proposed to retain more than 16 million volumes for 25 years under the HathiTrust Shared Print Program. These volumes correspond to more than 4.8 million individual book titles held in the HathiTrust Digital Library (about 65% of all HathiTrust digital monographs). This is a significant step toward the primary goal of the program: to ensure that print copies of all HathiTrust digital holdings remain available to scholars for many years to come. The Shared Print Program is a core program of HathiTrust, supported by and benefiting all of the more than 120 HathiTrust members

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Institutional Repositories as Infrastructures for Long-Term Preservation"

Helena Francke et al. have published "Institutional Repositories as Infrastructures for Long-Term Preservation" in Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The study describes the conditions for long-term preservation of the content of the institutional repositories of Swedish higher education institutions based on an investigation of how deposited files are managed with regards to file format and how representatives of the repositories describe the functions of the repositories.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

SSRN Launches Biology Research Network (BioRN)

SSRN has launched the Biology Research Network (BioRN).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Biology researchers are able to post preprints and working papers on BioRN, share ideas and other early stage research, and collaborate. It allows users to quickly upload and read abstracts and full-text papers, free of charge. A preprint is the author’s own write-up of research results and analysis that has not been peer-reviewed or had any value added to it by a publisher (such as formatting, copy-editing, technical enhancements). A preprint server, or working paper repository as they are also known, allows users to share these documents.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Four Decades Of Open Science"

Bernard L. Hecker has published "Four Decades Of Open Science" in Nature Physics.

Here's an excerpt:

INSPIRE, the central information resource of the high-energy physics community, pioneered the open dissemination of scientific literature. I

See also: "INSPIRE: Realizing the Dream of a Global Digital Library in High-Energy Physics."

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services"

Malcolm Wolski, Louise Howard, and Joanna Richardson have published "A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

There is worldwide interest in the potential of open science to increase the quality, impact, and benefits of science and research. More recently, attention has been focused on aspects such as transparency, quality, and provenance, particularly in regard to data. For industry, citizens, and other researchers to participate in the open science agenda, further work needs to be undertaken to establish trust in research environments. Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper examines the issue of trust in an open science environment, using virtual laboratories as the focus for discussion. A trust framework, which has been developed from an end-user perspective, is proposed as a model for addressing relevant issues within online research data services and tools.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Digital Public Library of America to Pilot eBook Lending in Fall"

DPLA has released "Digital Public Library of America to Pilot eBook Lending in Fall."

Here's an excerpt:

Planned for this fall, DPLA will be lending ebooks in what it hopes is a streamlined, non-proprietary and vendorless platform.

While ebook lending has grown fast among US public libraries, the process is not always seamless. Book discovery, borrowing, and consumption must happen within the provide'’s app or website. DPLA wants to create a process that isn’t as specific, and one that works with a broader range of content producers for better access to ebooks.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Developing Criteria to Establish Trusted Digital Repositories"

John Faundeen has published "Developing Criteria to Establish Trusted Digital Repositories" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper details the drivers, methods, and outcomes of the U.S. Geological Survey’s quest to establish criteria by which to judge its own digital preservation resources as Trusted Digital Repositories. . . . The methods entailed seeking existing evaluation criteria from national and international organizations such as International Standards Organization (ISO), U.S. Library of Congress, and Data Seal of Approval upon which to model USGS repository evaluations. Certification, complexity, cost, and usability of existing evaluation models were key considerations. The selected evaluation method was derived to allow the repository evaluation process to be transparent, understandable, and defensible; factors that are critical for judging competing, internal units. Implementing the chosen evaluation criteria involved establishing a cross-agency, multi-disciplinary team that interfaced across the organization.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

An Interactive Map for Showcasing Repository Impacts

Hui Zhang and Camden Lopez have published "An Interactive Map for Showcasing Repository Impacts>" in Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital repository managers rely on usage metrics such as the number of downloads to demonstrate research visibility and impacts of the repositories. Increasingly, they find that current tools such as spreadsheets and charts are ineffective for revealing important elements of usage, including reader locations, and for attracting the targeted audiences. This article describes the design and development of a readership map that provides an interactive, near-real-time visualization of actual visits to an institutional repository using data from Google Analytics. The readership map exhibits the global impacts of a repository by displaying the city of every view or download together with the title of the scholarship being read and a hyperlink to its page in the repository. We will discuss project motivation and development issues such as authentication with Google API, metadata integration, performance tuning, and data privacy.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

2018-2022: Sustainability Plan for Classic arXiv

Cornell University has released 2018-2022: Sustainability Plan for Classic arXiv .

Here's an excerpt:

As 2017 is the last year of the current five-year business model , working with the Member Advisory Board (MAB), the arXiv team has created a sustainability model for 2018–2022. The purpose of the plan is to lay out a business model for arXiv including anticipated expenses, potential revenue streams, value propositions, and communication strategies. The plan entails only the regular operation of arXiv—in other words, what we call "keeping the lights on." It should be seen as a baseline operational budget, as it does not factor in additional expenses required for R&D or new development projects such as arXiv-NG.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Practices of Research Data Curation in Institutional Repositories: A Qualitative View from Repository Staff"

Dong Joon Lee and Besiki Stvilia have published "Practices of Research Data Curation in Institutional Repositories: A Qualitative View from Repository Staff" in PLOS ONE.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The importance of managing research data has been emphasized by the government, funding agencies, and scholarly communities. Increased access to research data increases the impact and efficiency of scientific activities and funding. Thus, many research institutions have established or plan to establish research data curation services as part of their Institutional Repositories (IRs). However, in order to design effective research data curation services in IRs, and to build active research data providers and user communities around those IRs, it is essential to study current data curation practices and provide rich descriptions of the sociotechnical factors and relationships shaping those practices. Based on 13 interviews with 15 IR staff members from 13 large research universities in the United States, this paper provides a rich, qualitative description of research data curation and use practices in IRs. In particular, the paper identifies data curation and use activities in IRs, as well as their structures, roles played, skills needed, contradictions and problems present, solutions sought, and workarounds applied.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Landscape of Research Data Repositories in 2015: A re3data Analysis"

Maxi Kindling et al. have published "The Landscape of Research Data Repositories in 2015: A re3data Analysis" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

This article provides a comprehensive descriptive and statistical analysis of metadata information on 1,381 research data repositories worldwide and across all research disciplines. The analyzed metadata is derived from the re3data database, enabling search and browse functionalities for the global registry of research data repositories. The analysis focuses mainly on institutions that operate research data repositories, types and subjects of research data repositories (RDR), access conditions as well as services provided by the research data repositories. RDR differ in terms of the service levels they offer, languages they support or standards they comply with. These statements are commonly acknowledged by saying the RDR landscape is heterogeneous. As expected, we found a heterogeneous RDR landscape that is mostly influenced by the repositories' disciplinary background for which they offer services.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Data Curation Network: How Do We Compare? A Snapshot of Six Academic Library Institutions’ Data Repository and Curation Services"

Lisa R. Johnston et al. have published "Data Curation Network: How Do We Compare? A Snapshot of Six Academic Library Institutions’ Data Repository and Curation Services" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Methods: Each institutional lead provided a written summary of their services based on a previously developed structure, followed by group discussion and refinement of descriptions. Service areas assessed include the repository services for data, technologies used, policies, and staffing in place.

Conclusions: Through this process we aim to better define the current levels of support offered by our institutions as a first step toward meeting our project's overarching goal to develop a shared staffing model for data curation across multiple institutions.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Web Interface Security Vulnerabilities of European Academic Repositories"

Matus Formanek and Martin Zaborsky have published "Web Interface Security Vulnerabilities of European Academic Repositories" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

The given analysis summarizes the status quo of the level of security of web interfaces of selected European academic repositories in the field of library and information science. It focuses on the presence and qualities of the secure HTTPS protocol via SSL/TLS protocols. The security of the transmitted data is particularly important in the network environment of the Internet, especially if log-in user data is transmitted. Disclosure may have a direct impact on saved digital objects and their metadata which together represent the most valuable parts of systems of digital libraries and repositories. Furthermore, the paper points to the most noticeable vulnerabilities of protocols of web interfaces and presents practical recommendations for the expert public. These may contribute to the increase of the level of security of the discussed systems.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"14 Million Books & 6 Million Visitors: HathiTrust Growth and Usage in 2016"

HathiTrust has released 14 Million Books & 6 Million Visitors: HathiTrust Growth and Usage in 2016 .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The HathiTrust collection continues to grow steadily. As of January 1st, 2017, there are 14,816,187 volumes in the collection. Over one million volumes were added to the collection over the course of the preceding year, scanned from the library collections of 39 contributors. . . .

Within the HathiTrust certified trusted repository, 38% of the collection is available to users to access in full view, and the remaining 62% is made available in other ways: all users can search across and within those limited view books; researchers can now perform transformational, non-consumptive research within these books; and users with print disabilities can access the full text.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"A Metadata-Driven Approach to Data Repository Design"

Matthew J. Harvey, Andrew McLean, and Henry S. Rzep have published "A Metadata-Driven Approach to Data Repository Design" in the Journal of Cheminformatics.

Here's an excerpt:

The design and use of a metadata-driven data repository for research data management is described. Metadata is collected automatically during the submission process whenever possible and is registered with DataCite in accordance with their current metadata schema, in exchange for a persistent digital object identifier. Two examples of data preview are illustrated, including the demonstration of a method for integration with commercial software that confers rich domain-specific data analytics without introducing customisation into the repository itself.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"DPLA and Library of Congress Announce New Collaboration"

The Digital Public Library of America has released "DPLA and Library of Congress Announce New Collaboration."

Here's an excerpt:

The Library of Congress today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Digital Public Library of America to become a Content Hub and will ultimately share a significant portion of its rich digital resources with DPLA's database of digital content records.

The first batch of records will include 5,000 items from three major Library of Congress map collections—the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and panoramic maps.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Overly Honest Data Repository Development"

Colleen Fallaw et al. have published "Overly Honest Data Repository Development" in Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

After a year of development, the library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has launched a repository, called the Illinois Data Bank (https://databank.illinois.edu/), to provide Illinois researchers with a free, self-serve publishing platform that centralizes, preserves, and provides persistent and reliable access to Illinois research data. This article presents a holistic view of development by discussing our overarching technical, policy, and interface strategies. By openly presenting our design decisions, the rationales behind those decisions, and associated challenges this paper aims to contribute to the library community's work to develop repository services that meet growing data preservation and sharing needs.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Undercounting File Downloads from Institutional Repositories"

Patrick Obrien et al. have published "Undercounting File Downloads from Institutional Repositories" in the Journal of Library Administration.

Here's an excerpt:

A primary impact metric for institutional repositories (IR) is the number of file downloads, which are commonly measured through third-party Web analytics software. Google Analytics, a free service used by most academic libraries, relies on HTML page tagging to log visitor activity on Google's servers. However, Web aggregators such as Google Scholar link directly to high value content (usually PDF files), bypassing the HTML page and failing to register these direct access events. This article presents evidence of a study of four institutions demonstrating that the majority of IR activity is not counted by page tagging Web analytics software, and proposes a practical solution for significantly improving the reporting relevancy and accuracy of IR performance metrics using Google Analytics.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Dash: Data Sharing Made Easy at the University of California"

Stephen Abrams et al. have published "Dash: Data Sharing Made Easy at the University of California" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

While the UC Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library supports a growing roster of innovative curation services for University use, most were intended originally to meet the needs of institutional information professionals, such as librarians, archivists, and curators. In order to address the new curation concerns of individual scholars, UC3 realized that it needed to deploy new systems and services optimized for stakeholders with widely divergent experiences, expertise, and expectations. This led to the development of Dash, an online data publication service making campus data sharing easy. While Dash gives the appearance of being a full-fledged repository, in actuality it is only a lightweight overlay layer that sits on top of standards-compliant repositories, such as UC3's existing Merritt curation repository. The Dash service offers intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces for dataset submission, description, publication, and discovery. By imposing minimal prescriptive eligibility and submission requirements; automating and hiding the mechanical details of DOI assignment, data packaging, and repository deposit; and featuring a streamlined, self-service user experience that can be integrated easily into scholarly workflows, Dash is an important new service offering with which UC scholars can meet their RDM obligations.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Q&A with CNI’s Clifford Lynch: Time to Re-think the Institutional Repository?"

Richard Poynder has published "Q&A with CNI's Clifford Lynch: Time to Re-think the Institutional Repository?" in Open and Shut?.

Here's an excerpt:

Moreover, today we can see that the interoperability promised by OAI-PMH has not really materialised, few third-party service providers have emerged, and content duplication has not been avoided. And to the exasperation of green OA advocates, author self-archiving has remained a minority sport, with researchers reluctant to take on the task of depositing their papers in their institutional repository. Given this, some believe the IR now faces an existential threat.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Scraping Scientific Web Repositories: Challenges and Solutions for Automated Content Extraction"

Philipp Meschenmoser, Norman Meuschke, Manuel Hotz, and Bela Gipp have published "Scraping Scientific Web Repositories: Challenges and Solutions for Automated Content Extraction" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Many researchers are interested in accessing the underlying scientometric raw data to increase the transparency of these systems. In this paper, we discuss the challenges and present strategies to programmatically access such data in scientific Web repositories. We demonstrate the strategies as part of an open source tool (MIT license) that allows research performance comparisons based on Google Scholar data.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"TRY IT OUT: DSpace 6.0 Release Candidate #3 Available"

DuraSpace has released "TRY IT OUT: DSpace 6.0 Release Candidate #3 Available."

Here's an excerpt:

The third release candidate of 6.0 is now available for download and testing. 6.0-RC3 (Release Candidate #3) is a pre-release of 6.0, and we hope that the 6.0 final release will follow closely in its footsteps. . . .

We believe the 6.0 release is nearly production-ready, but could use your help in verifying there's nothing we've overlooked.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Just as Open Competitor to Elsevier’s SSRN Launches, SSRN Accused of Copyright Crackdown"

Mike Masnick has published "Just as Open Competitor to Elsevier's SSRN Launches, SSRN Accused of Copyright Crackdown" in Techdirt.

Here's an excerpt:

And perhaps this [SocArXiv announcement]came just in time, because just as that happened, Stephen Henderson, a law professor, noted that SSRN took down his paper saying that they didn't think he retained the copyright to it.

See also: "SocArXiv Debuts, as SSRN acquisition Comes Under Scrutiny."

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Developing SocArXiv—A New Open Archive of the Social Sciences to Challenge the Outdated Journal System"

Philip Cohen has published "Developing SocArXiv—A New Open Archive of the Social Sciences to Challenge the Outdated Journal System" in LSE Impact.

Here's an excerpt:

But there remains a need for a new general, open-access, open-source, paper server for the social sciences, one that encourages linking and sharing data and code, that serves its research to an open metadata system, and that provides the foundation for a post-publication review system. I hope that SocArXiv will enable us to save research from the journal system. Once it's built, anyone will be able to use it to organize their own peer-review community, to select and publish papers (though not exclusively), to review and comment on each other's work – and to discover, cite, value, and share research unimpeded. We will be able to do this because of a partnership with the Center for Open Science (which is already developing a new preprint server) and SHARE ("a free, open, data set about research and scholarly activities across their life cycle"). We are also supported by the University of Maryland, which hosts the initiative.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries"

Shea-Tinn Yeh et al. have published "Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The Library Technology Department at the University of Denver was tasked with implementing an Islandora open-source framework for its Special Collections Department because the current host was being retired. Although Islandora's front-end is tailored for librarians, its back-end is complex, and built upon many subsystems. A failure in any of the subsystems guarantees a domino effect and a chain reaction which can obfuscate the root cause of the issue. Though product documentation and support communication channels exist, many of the problems we faced were unique to our specific hardware and software configuration. The development team had to learn fast, and be innovative, agile, and systematic in order to work with such a complicated system. This article describes the tactics used in this repository development effort, as well as the library's stakeholder relationship management.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap