University LibrariesLibrary Systems Office

Life on MARSMason Archival Repository Service

Dorothea SaloDigital Repository Services Librarian

Library Systems Office

Over many years, research libraries have developed and optimized a series of “best practices” for

managing printed information.

Over many years, research libraries have developed and optimized a series of “best practices” for

managing printed information.

For most of that time, there has been a rough

balance between content creation (publishing) and the capacity of

libraries to manage the

information flow

For most of that time, there has been a rough

balance between content creation (publishing) and the capacity of

libraries to manage the

information flow

But the pace and the natureof content creation is changing...

Scholarly Journals

An important transition is underway...

The consumer price index rose 57%

The unit cost for journals increased 226%

The unit cost for books increased 66%

Between 1986 and 2000...

Faculty salaries increased 68%

Health care costs increased 107%

Why? Corporate mergers and consolidations reduced competition; pressure to publish on faculty fed submission-publication-subscription pressure on

libraries; prices rise as libraries drop subscriptions; etc.

•Libraries can’t preserve access to everything researchers need

•Researchers lose citation impact to publication delays and e-journal/database firewalls

•Can’t “publish” or preserve multimedia, data-sets

•Can you Google your own article? OAIster it? ariv it?

•Books? Small-society journals?

•Legal challenges to article use in e-reserves, distance-ed, etc.

Well, so what?

Ideally, the solution would be

web-based, support

recognized metadata

standards, be

interoperable with other

archival systems, support

format migration, and

expose our collections to

users worldwide via popular

search engines...

An institutional

repository is a set of

services that a

university offers to the

members of its

community for the

management and

dissemination of

digital materials

created by the

institution and its

community members.

-- Clifford Lynch, CNI

Institutional repositories like MARS provide an immediate and valuable complement to the existing scholarly publishing model, while stimulating innovation in a new disaggregated publishing structure that will evolve and improve over time.

Further, they build on growing grassroots faculty practices of self-posting research online and sharing it with colleagues by email.

So what does MARS mean to Mason?

A reliable, professionally managed, persistent archive of scholarly digital objects of enduring value to the university

A means to share the research work produced by Mason faculty with the broader community

Improved citation impact for Mason research

Improved visibility in virtual collections built via metadata exchange (e.g., OAIster, Google Scholar, Yahoo, etc.)

Visible support for the open access movement which benefits the library and the university.

Education and Outreach Services – Promote digital preservation. Explain digital-repository policies. Consult on digital preservation issues.

Accession and Data Storage – governed by submission agreements negotiated between the Library and object provider.

Discovery and Access – Support identification and retrieval of materials. Provide OAI-compliant metadata to expose materials worldwide (subject to limitations negotiated with object contributors)

Digital Object Integrity and Migration – Ensure the physical and intellectual integrity of repository materials. Perform transformative migration where required.

... and in the future, more!

Services we provide:

Tiers of Service

• Archived - Materials of significant and widespread value. Complex, normalized metadata. Periodic migration.

• Preserved – Materials have enduring value, but not enough to merit major investment. Basic metadata, supplied by content submitters. Preserve in current format, but not migrate.

• Stored - Materials not owned or managed by Mason, but which have long-term value to Mason scholarship. Mirrors of e-journals, other web sites, datasets, working papers, learning objects, etc. No commitment to migrate or preserve.

A quick look at how materials get into MARS

Read more

about it

<http://www.createchange.org/>

SPARC Open Access Newsletter: <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm

>

Open Access Webliography: <http://www.escholarlypub.com/cwb/oaw.htm

>

<http://www.createchange.org/>

SPARC Open Access Newsletter: <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm

>

Open Access Webliography: <http://www.escholarlypub.com/cwb/oaw.htm

>

What can I do?• Take a look! <http://mars.gmu.edu/>

•Be the MARS Coordinator for your department or research unit

• Submit work to MARS!

•Mention MARS to your Mason colleagues, formally and informally

•Monitor your own publication behavior

• What’s in your publication contract?

• What are the practices of the venues you write, edit, and review for?

• Talk to me: dsalo@gmu.edu, 3-3742