Category: Institutional Repositories

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 |

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

Jean-Gabriel Bankier and Courtney Smith, both of Berkeley Electronic Press, have self-archived "Digital Repositories at a Crossroads: Achieving Sustainable Success through Campus-wide Engagement" in SelectedWorks.

Here's an excerpt:

Repository initiatives were, at the outset, driven by two noble desires: to remove barriers to access; and, to begin to address the scholarly communications crisis. For universities across the globe, this specifically meant a focus on collecting peer reviewed journal articles. As we discovered together, neither faculty nor other campus constituents were impelled to invest or take ownership in the endeavor and the failure rate among digital repositories was very high.

Over the past few years a new model for the institutional repository has begun to emerge. To guarantee the long-term viability of the institutional repository (IR), the IR must be made integral to units on campus beyond the library. By working closely with Senior Administrators (like Provosts, Deans, and Department Heads), as well as faculty and students, librarians are offering valuable, targeted services that meet constituents’ needs and fulfill the goals of the repository. With this approach, the scope and value of the IR transcend a limited administrative or library function to fundamentally change the role of the library on campus.