scholarly communication in a digital world: the role of an institutional repository beth forrest...

Scholarly Communication in a Digital World:

The Role of an Institutional Repository

Beth Forrest WarnerAssistant Vice Provost for Information Services

(Strategic Initiatives)

Richard C. Fyffe

Assistant Dean of Libraries for Scholarly Communication

University of Kansas

Educause Southwest Regional Conference 27 February 2004

Copyright Statement

Copyright, Richard C. Fyffe and Beth Forrest Warner, 2004. This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the authors.

Scholarly Communication: What Is It?

“The technological and institutional means by which theories, interpretations, and findings are submitted to the scrutiny of disciplinary experts and critiqued, endorsed, disseminated, synthesized, and archived on behalf of a broad community of teachers and learners (novice and advanced, lay and professional).”

Scholarly Communication in a Half-Digital World: the Promise

Most scholarship is created and shared digitally

Many researchers already use the web for sharing part or all of their work

Growing appreciation of scholarship as a public good

Scholarly Communication in a Half-Digital World: Unrealized

Potential

Little integration of proliferating array of websites, databases, and journals

The record of most Universities’ research is invisible to the public, including funders

Little standardization of searching, presentation, and content formats

Enduring access (of files and of links) is an unresolved issue

User Interface

BibliographicDatabase

Z39.50DatabaseZ39.50

DatabaseScholar’sPersonalWebsite


DatabaseElectronic

JournalCollection


DatabaseDepartmentWebsite

User InterfaceUser Interface

User Interface

Scholar’s Research

DataDepartment

Server

Scholar’s Research

Data

Today’s Research Landscape…

Selected KU sites containing research information…

Potential Solutions?

providing access to existing networked research material through systems that federate distributed information resources

regaining control of scholarly information providing long-term management and

increased accessibility and visibility for university research

Need mechanisms

for…

Potential Solution: Institutional Repositories

Digital collections and services that capture and preserve the intellectual output of university communities.

Elements of an Institutional Repository Program: Focus

Academic digital content created at / by the institution

University-wide view of research, creative, and teaching activity

Elements of an Institutional Repository Program:Tools

A centralized set of tools to help faculty and staff disseminate their work by: posting documents creating standardized metadata administering collections

Elements of an Institutional Repository Program:

Management

Long-term preservation of content and metadata through centralized planning and funding managed storage and migration persistent object names

Elements of an Institutional Repository Program:

Discovery

A metadata system to enable this work to be discovered

Integrated access and retrieval integration into a local search system via federated

search (e.g., ENCompass, MetaLib, etc.) or metadata harvesting

Coordination / integration with other institutional and disciplinary repositories via federated search or metadata harvesting repository registration

Potential Issues

Content and metadata standards Resource naming conventions

persistent identifiers Resource organization Migration / preservation issues Long-term resource & access control

rights management resource modification, deletion, embargoing

Funding, space, services allocations

Selected Repository Platforms

Eprints: Caltech Collection of Open Digital Archives: http://library.caltech.edu/digital/

BEPress: eScholarship (California Digital Library): http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/

DSpace: DSpace (MIT): http://dspace.mit.edu/

http://library.caltech.edu/digital/

http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/

http://dspace.mit.edu/

DSpace: the Concepts

Open-source platform, freely available Initially developed by MIT and Hewlett Packard Development now coordinated by the DSpace

Federation (http://www.dspace.org) Based on concept of research communities /

units with community / unit administration of membership and content

http://www.dspace.org/

KU ScholarWorks

“A repository of scholarship created by faculty and staff at the University of Kansas.”

Platform: DSpace Pilot phase started in September 2003 https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/

KU ScholarWorks Development: Technical Considerations

Basic background information at http://www.dspace.org/resource/start.html

Software Open source - available at Sourceforge UNIX-type OS, such as Linux, HP/UX or Solaris Written in Java

Javabeans Activation Framework, Java Servlet, JSP, JavaMail API Built on top of free, open source tools

Apache Web server Tomcat Servlet engine Ant PostgreSQL relational database system Handle Server


Hardware (at KU) SunFire 280R Server

two 900MHz UltraSPARC-III Cu processors 8MB E-cache 2GB memory two 36GB 10,000rpm HH internal FCAL disk drives DVD network connections

RAID storage (436-GB, or 12 x 26.4 GB10K RPM disks) Tape backup (general machine room system)


Local staffing considerations, skills dependent on level of local modification

hardware, O/S support DBA (PostgreSQL) Java, web support local I/A/A integration (LDAP, account management) metadata support

DSpace support community general & technical lists User Group

KU ScholarWorks Development: Working Groups

Collaboration of Library and IT staff: Leadership Group Early Adopters Working Group Policy Working Group Standards Working Group Access & Rights Management Working Group Promotion Working Group Training Working Group System Implementation Team


Early Adopters WG: Membership Library collections officer Library subject specialists (bibliographers) Library technology staff (systems) Information technology staff (user support)


Early Adopters WG: Charge Develop criteria and desiderata for participation as

an “early adopter” Draft mutual expectations for initial participation Identify a small number of initial contributors to the

Repository Work with the Early Adopters to facilitate their use

of the pilot system and provide feedback to other working groups.


Policy WG: Membership Chief Information Officer Information technology policy analyst University website manager IT/Library licensing specialist Library collections officer


Policy WG: Develop framework and coordinate feedback with Early Adopters WG:

Types of content accepted Acceptable content formats (building on work of the Standards

group) Acceptable metadata formats (building on work of the

Standards group) Protocols for contributing and approving contributions Content lifecycle (choices on time the content is kept) Intellectual Property Access protocols


Standards WG: Membership Director of Digital Library Initiatives University website administrator Library head of cataloging Library metadata coordinator Information technology web developer


Standards WG: Charge Develop standards for content format and metadata Identify submission workflow issues and procedures

as they relate to standards and searching With the Early Adopters Working Group make

recommendations regarding the submission interface for DSpace at KU

Recommend priorities for implementation

KU ScholarWorks Development: Phase Ø

System Implementation (Summer / Fall 2003) hardware procurement, installation initial software installation

O/S, supporting components, DSpace interface / Help modifications system testing

administrative functionsmetadata creation, item submission

local training development / testing

KU ScholarWorks Development: Phase 1

Recruitment of Early Adopters for Feedback on Interface and Policy Issues (Fall 2003) 6 teaching faculty in diverse disciplines

invited to test and critique conversations with selected faculty, deans,

and Research Center directors


Evaluation (January-February 2004) focus group with early adopters on Policy

issues interviews with early adopters on basic

functionality focus group with grant PI’s on dissemination

needs


Issues to Resolve: Policy community-based structure vs. “open deposit” governance and decision-making “controversial” content modification / withdrawal of contributions intellectual property:

impact on future publication impact of prior publication on use in the repository

funding and cost-allocation


Issues to Resolve: Technical integration with local I/A/A procedures / systems versioning / deletion of contributions modification / updating of metadata representing hierarchy among communities delegating administration to communities integration of resources

loading metadata into local systems such as ENCompass availability for OAI harvesting by other systems.

KU ScholarWorks: Lessons Learned

Successful Institutional Repositories will be a partnership of: Information Technology staff Library staff Faculty / Researchers

KU ScholarWorks: Lessons Learned

The key challenges are cultural, not technical scholarly practices differ across disciplines

and subdisciplines academic departments are not natural

epistemic communities epistemic communities are dynamic while

archival systems assume stability

For Further Information

Clifford A. Lynch, “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age,” ARL Bimonthly Report 226 (February 2003): http://www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html

A Guide to Institutional Repository Software v 2.0 (Budapest Open Access Initiative): http://www.soros.org/openaccess/software/

Richard Fyffe and Beth Forrest Warner, “Scholarly Communication in a Digital World: The Role of an Institutional Repository”: http://hdl.handle.net/1808/126

scholarly communication in a digital world: the role of an institutional repository beth forrest...

Documents

research information

collections slide

public good slide

unresolved issue slide

teaching activity slide

universities research

institutional means

halfdigital world