The SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 will delve into four key areas.
Early discussion of campus-based digital repositories tended to focus on pre-print and post-print versions of faculty research papers. Many institutions have discovered strong interest within their communities in disseminating other types of content as well – including audio, video, and image research outputs, electronic versions of graduate theses and dissertations, undergraduate student papers and multimedia projects, and ancillary evidence such as datasets, interview transcripts, etc. that might be created in the course of research and class work and cited in papers and projects. These interests have been strengthened by requirements set by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and other agencies that data-sharing plans accompany certain grant applications.
Papers are invited to explore the challenges of integrating new types of materials:
The recent report on “University Publishing in a Digital Age” by Laura Brown, sponsored by Ithaka, encourages the development of “university publishing strategies” and planning and support for a more strategic approach to disseminating the work of the institution’s faculty and staff. Publishing, too often delegated to commercial operations outside the academy, should be reinstated as mission critical to the academic ambitions of every university and college. Digital repositories are an increasingly important medium for scholarly communication and are a part of a set of emerging publishing functions on campuses. Campus publishing activities are becoming increasingly collaborative as libraries partner with departments and colleges, campus I.T., university presses, or even outside entities such as scholarly societies.
Papers are encouraged to feature successful and innovative collaborations to develop university-based publishing functions, showing how digital repositories can be tied creatively into a wider publishing strategy.
Now that your digital repository up and running, what’s next? The success of repositories will depend on the extent to which users value the services they offer. This session will look at the types of services that can take digital repositories beyond the somewhat static repository concept and make them more attractive for searching and depositing and reuse of the material. What are these services, how can they be created and maintained, and how can repository practitioners engage with service providers?
Papers are invited to explore these and other related questions:
One of the challenges facing all repositories is the establishment of institutional policies related to the submission of materials. These policies may address issues such as:
Other policy challenges arise when multiple institutions share a common repository space. In addition, discussions with individuals who work for repositories indicate that some faculty are concerned that requirements for deposit may impose on their academic freedom. As libraries support needs of research, what kinds of confidentiality and access policies have campuses established for hosting and disseminating social science datasets?
Proposals are not being solicited for the Policy panel at this time.