EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Digital Collections

New Tool for Online Collections

ckeller — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:21:06 -0600

Open source software package allows libraries, museums and collectors to more easily archive, display and manage their online holdings.

ORE Specification and User Guide

ckeller — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:24:34 -0600

Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) defines standards for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources. This document provides an introduction and lists the specifications and user guide documents that make up the OAI-ORE standards.

These documents are the result of over a year of effort by a large group of people. OAI now seeks feedback on their contents, as part of our effort to transition these documents to beta and then final production release.

Pooling Scholars’ Digital Resources

ckeller — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:11:46 -0600

George Mason U. and the Internet Archive are preparing a system that will let scholars upload documents to the public domain for sharing.

Census of Institutional Repositories in the U.S

ckeller — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:09:30 -0600

A Comparison Across Institutions at Different Stages of IR Development.

Utah Digital Repository Initiative: Building a Support System for Institutional Repositories

ckeller — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:26:28 -0600

As the deployment of institutional repositories (IR) becomes mature, more libraries will take advantage of consortial or regional ties to provide support, training, and expertise in IR development. This support structure is essential for organizations that otherwise would not have the staff, time, or infrastructure to creation an IR. The Utah Digital Repository (http://harvester.lib.utah.edu/utah_ir/), an LSTA grant-funded project, serves as a model for the creation of a statewide repository. This case study will explore the development and growth of institutional repositories in academic libraries in the state of Utah. Built on the existing framework of the Mountain West Digital Library, the Utah Digital Repository project provided a librarian's toolkit, training sessions, outreach, and technical assistance as pilot sites developed an IR. This framework of support ensures that an academic library of any size can launch an institutional repository. A single web site allows users to search the aggregated metadata of multiple institutions. This article includes statistics and survey results in addition to an overview of the development process that will aid other libraries considering the development of similar shared resources.

‘Scholarship in the Digital Age’

ckeller — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:19:17 -0600

"It’s hard to meet academics these days whose work hasn’t been changed by the Internet. But even if everyone knows that the world of scholarship has changed, it’s not always clear just how or the way those evolutions fit into the broad history of scholarship. Christine L. Borgman sets out to do just that in Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure and the Internet, just published by MIT Press. Borgman, a presidential chair in information studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, responded to e-mail questions about her book. "

Top ten assumptions for the future of academic libraries and librarians: A report from the ACRL research committee

ckeller — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:57:46 -0600

"In 2006 the ACRL Executive Committee asked the ACRL Research Committee to determine ten assumptions about the future that would have a significant impact on academic libraries and librarians. In the ensuing months, members of the Research Committee reviewed previous similar reports; surveyed ACRL committees, councils, and sections; conducted literature reviews; and reviewed the ACRL Environmental Scan of 2003. What emerged was a long list of statements that, after deliberations, was shortened to the ten most pertinent assumptions. These assumptions identify present conditions that the committee feels will have a significant impact on how academic libraries and librarians plan for the next ten years."

Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections

drupal — Wed, 30 May 2007 11:12:34 -0500

"In May 2006, the University of Washington Libraries Digital Initiatives unit began a project to integrate the UW Libraries Digital Collections into the information workflow of our students by inserting links into the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The idea for this project grew out of our reading of OCLC's 2005 report Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources [1] which states that only 2% of college and university students begin searching for information at a library web site. It is, therefore, incumbent upon Librarians to look for new ways to reach out to our users where they begin their information search."

Standing Up for Open Access

drupal — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:36:32 -0500

"Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were perplexed: How could a membership organization that gladly accepts and archives their scholarly work turn around and limit transmission of the material?"

Institutional Repositories: Evaluating the Reasons for Non-use of Cornell University's Installation of DSpace

drupal — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:47:52 -0500

This article reports on a three-part evaluative study of institutional repositories. We describe the contents and participation in Cornell's DSpace and compare these results with seven university DSpace installations. Through in-depth interviews with eleven faculty members in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, we explore their attitudes, motivations, and behaviors for non-participation in institutional repositories.