Online Scholarship Initiative at the UVa

The University of Virginia Library's Electronic Text Center now offers a
new service to UVa faculty (limited initially to a selection of
humanities and social science departments).  The Online Scholarship
Initiative enables UVa faculty to make available on the Internet
pre-print copies of articles to be published, and post-print copies of
articles already published. 

The Initiative is both a new service at UVa and a national pilot
project, growing from the discussions sponsored by the Association of
American Universities and ARL.  Some hope that the Online Scholarship
Initiative will serve as a model for other universities and colleges,
with the eventual aim of creating an online, searchable, national
archive of faculty scholarship.

Among the many benefits made possible through this new service are:

 - rapid access to scholarship because a copy of an article can be
made available electronically long before it is available in print;

 - more convenient access to scholarship because the means both to
find and read an appropriate article are contained within a single
electronic service;

 - an eventual electronic archive of published articles made possible
through partnerships with established academic publishers;

 - the ability to include material in an electronic version that
cannot be included in a print journal (including multiple color
illustrations, sound, and "hypertext" connections to other articles or
resources on the Internet); and

 - increased visibility for scholarly output written at UVa.

In practice, the Online Scholarship Initiative will:

 - create, maintain, and publicize an online searchable archive of UVa
scholarship, with particular emphasis on availability through the
World Wide Web;

 - provide tools for converting word processing files to a suitable
format for inclusion in the online archive;

 - help clarify the different issues and publication possibilities that
are associated with electronic publishing;

 - work with publishers to secure electronic publication rights for
electronic pre- and post-prints; and

 - work with UVa-based scholarly journals to explore the options for
publishing online versions of their material.

The Online Scolarship Initative can be reached at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/osi/html.  For more information contact
Peter Byrnes at (804) 924-3169; David Seaman at (804) 924-3230; or
e-mail: 9243169@virginia.edu.

by David Seaman, Coordinator Electronic Text Center, Alderman Library
University of Virginia


-------
ARL 180
A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions
Association of Research Libraries
May 1995