Institutional Repositories:the DSpace Experience

Ann J. Wolpert

Director of Libraries

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Scholarly communication is in transition

Publication is only one part of the network-enabled “system”

Disciplines are experimenting

Traditional outlets are constrained

New formats present preservation challenges

Required responsibilities not yet defined

Increasing amounts of intellectual output have no print analog.

The digital genie is out of the bottle in all disciplines.

Digital and print need new, interoperable management and access models.

Educational content is increasingly digital in format.

Digital is still frighteningly fragile

The scholarly communications system must work for all.

Disciplines can change their assessments and procedures.Universities can change their standards for judging impact.Authors can use contracts that enhance reader access.Publishers can work for more rational economics for book publishing.Editors can accept responsibility for the cost of their journals.

To support these changes, new tools are required.

To build “the record” in new formatsTo preserve “the record” in new formatsTo share innovation and informationTo assure affordability and accessTo sustain teaching using new tools and techniquesTo protect university investments

Institutional Repositories offer part of the solution

A tool for faculty and institutions

Institution-based counterweight

Scholarly and educational material in digital formats

Cumulative and perpetual

Open and interoperable

DSpace was designed for adoption from the start.

MIT Libraries/Hewlett Packard Research Labs collaborative development projectBroad vs deepFederation modelPreservation archiveOpen SourceAgnostic as to content145 repositories in use worldwide today, 4000+ copies of the code downloaded

DSpace Offerings

Large-scale, stable, managed long-term storage

Support for range of digital formats

Easy-to-use submission process

Persistent network identifiers

Access control

Search and delivery interface

Possible Content

Preprints, articles

Technical Reports

Working Papers

Conference Papers

E-theses

Datasets statistical, geospatial,

matlab, etc.

Images visual, scientific, etc.

Audio files

Video files

Learning Objects

Reformatted digital library collections

Why Libraries

Expertise Large-scale collection management

Assessment/collection policies preservation

Metadata Solid business practices

Commitment Long time frames Mission scope

Why the MIT Libraries?

Distributed library system

Service emphasizes relevance

Faculty who are interested and have expertise plus relationships

Culture of experimentation

Tradition of openness

Challenges

Faculty Acceptance Valuing and trusting an institutional archive Myriad disciplines with different cultures Copyright/IP opinions and policies

Library Culture Policies Operations

Learning and Sharing Designing DSpace system to federate Tracking digital library research, reporting out

Sustainability institutional, financial, preservation

What’s next for DSpace?

Digital preservation Digital files (e.g. audio, video, image, text) Web sites (e.g. W3C) Software programs

Personal Archiving strategies DSpace on your laptop Proactive collaboration with content creators

Federation and economic sustainability

http://www.dspace.org