The theme for the 2019 International Open Access Week, October 21-27, is “Open for Whom? Equity in Knowledge.” The chasm separating those on opposite cliffs of the digital divide remains, despite ongoing efforts to bridge it, and it is this persistent gap that underscores the 2019 OA’s week theme question: ¿Abierto para quien? Open For Whom?

• Knowledge Unlatched
• Open Library of the Humanities
• Annual Reviews
• ORCID US Community and Scholarly Communication
• SCOAP³

In addition to the initiatives highlighted in the video, LYRASIS is proud to support open source software that enables open access and digital preservation. In particular, DSpace is used by more than 2,000 organizations and institutions to create open access to scientific and cultural heritage resources making it the most widely-used repository software in the world.

Austin, TX   2,207 users from around the world have implemented repositories with the popular DSpace, out-of-the box, open source, repository software in order to openly share and preserve digital scholarly information from more than 122 countries.

To take a look at the wide range of institutions and organizations that are using DSpace to make their scholarly resources discoverable and accessible visit the DSpace Registry: http://registry.duraspace.org/registry/dspace

This week the DSpace community has proudly released DSpace 6.0, with a big thank you for contributed code, bug reports, and bug fixes from 73 individuals. Together with DuraSpace these are the people who have helped make significant DSpace API enhancements and new features freely available to all.

• DSpace 6.0 can be downloaded immediately from: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/releases/tag/dspace-6.0
• 6.0 Release notes are available at: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Release+Notes
• In addition, you are welcome to try out DSpace 6 on http://demo.dspace.org/ and continue to provide feedback on this major release.

This release features an enhanced configuration system, enhanced file storage plugins, and new quality control/healthcheck reporting features (via REST API and via email).  In addition, DSpace 6 has an eye on the future, with a major Java API refactor that adds support for both UUIDs and Hibernate in our database layer.  Like its predecessor, DSpace 6 continues to strive to simplify your upgrade process by automatically updating your database to 6.x compatibility (from any prior DSpace version).

Read more here: bit.ly/2eN5YQt

“Telling DSpace Stories” introduces people, ideas and innovation.  This community-led initiative introduces project leaders and their ideas to one another while providing details about DSpace open access repository implementations. Open Access Week offers examples of best practices and Open Access benefits. We want to do just that by sharing what others have observed as a result of establishing DSpace repositories.

DSpace community members were asked the following questions, “What strategic organizational or institutional goals did DSpace help you meet?” and “What advice would you give to other organizations that are planning to establish a DSpace repository?”  May their answers educate and inspire you!

Note: Each interview includes personal observations that may not represent the opinions and views of the institution.

What strategic organizational or institutional goals did DSpace help you meet?

“DSpace has helped increase the online presence of University of Manitoba research. Achieving this goal has successfully demonstrated the Libraries’ ability to implement, develop and manage digital systems and preserve digital data for the university’s research community.”  – Carell Jackimiek , University of Manitoba

“Our eclectic approach to archiving University content has been met with a lot of enthusiasm.   University Relations, for example, has begun to archive its commencement bulletins; Library search requests and result files are archived; academic journal pdf’s are archived in DSpace and then backed up to DuraCloud for preservation. We don’t put many preconditions on the kinds of collections we will add to repository. The justification has to make sense in that it serves the University in some way. We have to have the legal right to include them, and it must be in a format that makes sense for DSpace.”  – Richard Jizba, Creighton University

“Instead of waiting for specialized features being developed by a partner or the community, we are now able to just implement enhancements very specific to our organizational context. The very regular DSpace release policy makes it easy for us to just follow the product development cycles, making features available to our users with quite low latency. We are able to just define interfaces as they are needed, be it for other repositories, for our users or for our in-house customers. Furthermore, DSpace made it easy to us to start quite small and make the improvements as part of an ongoing process.”  – Stefan Hohenadel , University of Konstanz

What advice would you give to other organizations that are planning to establish a DSpace repository?

“We began with DSpace, eleven plus years ago and have not looked back. There were a few bumpy patches along the way but we have always been able to offer our research community a consistently reliable service that integrates well with other environments and keeps pace with current best practices. I believe it is best to start small. Work with one client or department who wants a repository and develop the service together.”  –  Carell Jackimiek , University of Manitoba

“Think through policies clearly and carefully before bringing up the repository. It was very helpful to me, coming in after the repository had been established, to have many of those policies in place. It helps keep you from agonizing over every decision related to collecting, retaining, and preserving items on a case by case basis.”  – Colleen Lyon, University of Texas Libraries

“Just get moving on it!  It just works. You don’t have to be afraid to do customizations and make it your own.  But be aware of limiting your upgrade burden if you do so.”  – Richard Jizba, Creighton University

“The decision for using DSpace as your IR requires adjusting DSpace to your organizational needs. DSpace is a very convenient, usable piece of software, but it ships in a “generic” state. So your organization may find itself on the way of transitioning from just running and configuring a software to a real software development process. Better not incommode your admins with the requirements of implementing features in DSpace, just hire developers. Have a rock-solid Java competence level in your organization. Know your software engineering best practices. Make the repository manager and the development team work together as reliable partners in mutual respect and faith. Respect the wishes of your users. Respect the requirements coming from the librarians who are forced to work with what you provide. Respect the requirement of having a professionally developed IR: our experiences suggest, that a single person is not sufficient to perform your DSpace integration and launch in a sensible amount of time. But when investing some resources, DSpace will make a sound, robust, performant, elegant and individual repository.”  – Stefan Hohenadel , University of Konstanz

Read the follwing “Telling DSpace Stories” to learn more about how others have implemented DSpace at several types of institutions in different parts of the world:

•Telling DSpace Stories at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) with Alan Orth

•Telling DSpace Stories at University of Konstanz with Stefan Hohenadel

•Telling DSpace Stories at Creighton University with Richard Jizba

•Telling DSpace Stories at University of Texas Libraries with Colleen Lyon

•Telling DSpace Stories at University of Manitoba with Carell Jackimiek

Do you have a story to share? We invite you to consider joining DSpace storytellers.  Join us in sharing the energy, enthusiasm and good ideas of the DSpace community.  Contact Carol Minton Morris.

The Open Access Week global event provides an opportunity for the academic and research community to showcase the benefits of Open Access, and to share what they’ve learned as a way of inspiring increased participation in providing Open Access to scholarship and research.  In celebration of Open Access Week 2015, October 19-25, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization invites you to learn about the DSpace community’s recent, “Telling Stories” initiative.  

The DSpace Marketing Interest Group began the “Telling Stories” project to grow the DSpace open source community and engage its members by sharing each others’ stories.  DSpace storytellers reached out to users in several locations to learn more about their experiences with the software and how participation impacted open access to scholarly resources.  Stories were generated from simple set of questions and answers. These stories are real-world examples of how DSpace is being implemented and highlights their activities and accomplishments towards curation, collection, management, access and long-term preservation of digital assets.  Stay tuned for DSpace stories during Open Access Week 2015.

VIVO is an open source semantic web application that enables the discovery of researchers and scholars and their interests, accomplishments, activities, datasets, and other related resources. VIVO provides the capability to locate collaborators within institutions, or when networked, across a variety of research networking platforms. The VIVO Community consists of international participants and many are very actively engaged in the development of the VIVO-ISF ontology, applications and tools to extend the capabilities of VIVO, and creating features to extend the core VIVO software. Through a variety of activities, including the annual VIVO Conference, Hackathons, and Implementation Fests, VIVO epitomizes the desirable traits of an inclusive, open source community that consistently strives to meet the needs of VIVO current and prospective users.

We have selected three VIVO projects to demonstrate various projects that have been undertaken in the spirit of open access principles. Many other customized VIVO implementations provide value to their host institutions ranging from front-end access to authoritative organizational information to highlights of works created by scholars in the social sciences and arts and humanities. Virtual organizations also rely on VIVO, including the Clinical and Translational Science Award Consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health. This consortium is dedicated to shortening the time required to discover, develop, and place new life-saving therapies into the hands of clinicians.

VIVO is a community sponsored project and is sustained by members like you. To learn how your organization can become a member, please visit the DuraSpace.org website here.

Explore VIVO at VIVOweb.org. Track the VIVO blog or follow us on Twitter @VIVOcollab.

Yaffle, Memorial University

Memorial University has a special and serious obligation to the people of the province, Newfoundland and Labrador.  Part of Memorial’s commitment to fulfill that social mandate is to engage with public and community partners in research that solves real world issues.

To facilitate that exchange, Memorial University developed Yaffle, a web connection and engagement application that supports Knowledge Mobilization, the bi-directional creation and sharing of knowledge. This past year the Yaffle team at Memorial’s Harris Centre joined forces with the VIVO initiative and worked together to model Knowledge Mobilization. One result of that work is the Yaffle Knowledge Mobilization Ontology, an ontology that was designed to fit within the VIVO-ISF framework. In addition to adding a semantic layer to the Yaffle technology stack, the Yaffle team developed a content management layer in Drupal and an API for writing content to VIVO.

Memorial University researchers and the public use Yaffle to highlight their diverse work, unique interests and valued expertise around the province and the world! In the Spring of 2015 Yaffle will launch two additional schools in the Atlantic provinces.

For more information visit http://www.yaffle.ca or contact Lisa Charlong at lcharlong@mun.ca.

Deep Carbon Observatory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a global research program designed to transform our understanding of the role of carbon in Earth development. DCO is a community of scientists ranging from biologists to physicists, geoscientists to chemists, whose work crosses several disciplinary lines, in order to develop new, integrative fields of deep carbon science. DCO’s infrastructure includes public engagement and education, online and offline community support, innovative data management, and novel instrumentation [adapted from Wikipedia].

The Deep Carbon Observatory Digital Object Registry (“DCO-VIVO”), is a centrally-managed digital object identification, object registration and metadata management service for the DCO Data Portal. The DCO Data Portal provides the digital object registration process for DCO Community members. Digital object registration includes DCO-ID generation based on the global Handle System infrastructure and metadata collection using VIVO. Where appropriate, users will be linked into the DCO Data Repository for data deposit as required. DCO-VIVO is maintained by the DCO Data Science Team at the Tetherless World Constellation of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. DCO-VIVO is an instance of Version 1.5.2 of the VIVO open source platform.

In the following figure, readers can view how the DCO Research Network and VIVO fit into the overall architecture of the DCO program.

For further information about the Deep Carbon Observatory program, visit http://www.deepcarbon.net/

To view the VIVO-enabled DCA Data Portal, visit https://info.deepcarbon.net/vivo/

EarthCube, National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research), Cornell University, and UNAVCO

Making research data more traceable is the goal of a two-year project entitled “Enabling Scientific Collaboration and Discovery through Semantic Connections”. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation’s EarthCube initiative, which supports transformative approaches to data management across the geosciences. NCAR/UCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research), Cornell University, and UNAVCO (a non-profit university-governed consortium that facilitates geoscience research and education using Geodesy) are partnering to connect data among field experiments, research teams, datasets, research instruments, and published findings.  

The project will demonstrate the benefits of a linked open data by adapting VIVO so it can be applied to large-scale field experiments involving many investigators from a wide range of institutions. This work would result in creating a network of information linking field experiments with particular datasets, authors, publications, and even research tools that result from or are associated with each experiment. VIVO will use data from two sources: a recent NSF-supported interdisciplinary field program whose data archive is hosted by NCAR’s Earth Observing Laboratory (the Bering Sea Project), and a set of diverse research projects informed by geodetic tools, such as GPS networks and ground-based imaging, that are operated and maintained by UNAVCO.

The success of such an approach to store and archive data could be expanded to other field experiments, including their data sets, researchers, publications, and research resources.

For further information, please visit: http://www.unavco.org/projects/other-projects/earthcube/earthcube.html

http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/in-brief/12278/making-research-data-more-traceable

https://www.eol.ucar.edu/content/earthcube-proposals

Winchester, MA  DSpaceDirect (http://dspacedirect.org) is a hosted repository solution for low-cost discovery, access, archiving, and preservation.  DSpaceDirect is available with convenient features that include fast start-up, you-pick customization, no-cost upgrades, content preservation options, anytime data access and all-the-time data control–all at a price that puts solutions for long-term access to digital scholarly assets within reach of institutions of any size.

Your DSpaceDirect repository is online and web accessible as soon as you sign up for an account. That way you can add content and provide immediate access to your users, wherever they happen to be located.  DSpaceDirect is integrated with the DuraCloud service which provides DSpaceDirect users with a back-up copy of their content. In addition, DuraCloud performs regular health checks on stored content that are necessary to detect if content has experienced integrity issues as it has been stored in the cloud. This process ensures that a file remains the same over time.  Additionally, DSpaceDirect offers “You-Pick Features” designed to ensure your brand is communicated through your repository.  With so many features, DSpaceDirect puts solutions for long-term access to digital scholarly assets within reach of institutions of any size all at a price you can afford (http://dspacedirect.org/interested).

Bennington College Digital Repository, Bennington College

Bennington College needed a solution with built-in technical support for storing and making student’s electronic theses and dissertations along with a collection of scanned high quality images and film. DSpaceDirect is a good solution, says Oceana Wilson, Director of Library and Information Services Crossett Library, “We have a small staff and don’t have an archivist. Keeping up with archival records is an ongoing challenge. There is an interest within the campus community to access the archive as as well as external audiences, such as scholars of modern dance history.  By making our archive accessible we boost archival access for researchers on and off campus. Our records can be found on the Web with DSpace.”

URL: https://crossettlibrary.dspacedirect.org/

Related link: http://dspacedirect.org/profile/24

SU Scholar, Southwestern University

SU Scholar is Southwestern University’s institutional repository, preserving and providing access to content created by members of the University. It collects scholarly and creative works produced by faculty, students, and other members of the Southwestern University community. SU Scholar includes faculty working papers, journal articles, conference presentations, book chapters, and creative works.

URL: https://suscholar.southwestern.edu/

Related link(s): https://suscholar.southwestern.edu/handle/11214/74

Delaware County Community College Digital Repository and Archives, Delaware County Community College

Delaware County Community College Digital Repository and Archives contains and preserves digital content related to the College Archives and open educational resources used in teaching and learning.  The Archive collection consists of administrative and academic files, publications, images, interviews and more all dedicated to keeping track of college history and to serving research needs.

URL: https://repository.dccc.edu

Related link: http://www.dccc.edu/

Winchester, MA  Fedora (http://fedorarepository.org) is a robust, modular open source repository system for the management and dissemination of digital content. It is especially suited for digital libraries and archives, both for access and preservation. It is also used to provide specialized access to very large and complex digital collections of historic and cultural materials as well as scientific data. The current Fedora Repository Software release may be found here: http://fedorarepository.org/software/current.

Fedora’s flexibility enables it to integrate gracefully with many types of enterprise and web-based systems, offering scalability (e.g., millions of objects) and durability (e.g., all of the information is maintained in files with no software dependency, from which the complete repository can be rebuilt at any time). It also provides the ability to express rich sets of relationships among digital resources and to query the repository using the semantic web’s SPARQL query language.

Fedora has a worldwide installed user base that includes academic and cultural heritage organizations, universities, research institutions, university libraries, national libraries, and government agencies (http://registry.duraspace.org/registry/fedora).

Repository | images, Northwestern University Library

In 2007 the Northwestern University Library assumed responsibility for the Visual Media Collection (Art History Slide Library) and had to evaluate issues in three major areas of image collection management: digitization and cataloging, service assessment, and providing tools to make the collection useable. The Visual Media Collection was to become a wider Digital Image Library, thus collections and affiliated services were evaluated to determine how they would integrate with the digital repository and transition from serving one discipline to many. The result was the development of Repository | images: an institutional repository for images built using the Hydra technology framework and based on the Fedora digital repository system.

Northwestern faculty, students and staff can access the collection of 115,000 images while the public can access digital library collections that are identified as public.

URL:  https://images.library.northwestern.edu/

Related link: http://www.library.northwestern.edu/

Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI)

The Digital Repository of Ireland is an interactive trusted digital repository for contemporary and historical, social and cultural data held by Irish institutions. The Digital Repository of Ireland is built by a research consortium of six academic partners working together to deliver the repository, policies, guidelines and training. These research consortium partners are: Royal Irish Academy (RIA, lead institute), National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM), Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), and National College of Art and Design (NCAD).  

URL: http://www.dri.ie/

Related link: https://www.ria.ie/research/dri.aspx

Florida State University Digital Library, Florida Virtual Campus and Florida State University Libraries

The FSU Digital Library provides online access to Florida State University’s rich and unique historical collections of thousands of photos, pamphlets, historic maps, manuscripts, and rare books.  It highlights collections from Special Collections & Archives, Heritage Protocol, and the Claude Pepper Library, including yearbooks from 1900 to 1997, historical photos of campus, and selections from the Paul A.M. Dirac Papers.  The Digital Library supports active learning and engagement by providing ample opportunities for discovery and scholarship and continues to add new resources.

URL: http://fsu.digital.flvc.org/

Related link: https://www.lib.fsu.edu/announcement/fsu-libraries-launches-digital-library    

Research Direct, University of Western Sydney Library

Research Direct, the University of Western Sydney’s, institutional repository promotes access to over 21,000 journal articles, books, reports, and faculty and student output.  UWS research is made searchable and accessible to their internal and global research community through Research Direct.

URL: http://researchdirect.uws.edu.au/

Related links: http://library.uws.edu.au/uws_library/

DSpace (http://dspace.org) enables the creation of simple open access repositories at organizations all over the world. Globally it is the most widely used open source repository software (http://registry.duraspace.org/registry/dspace) for institutional and open access repositories.

DSpace preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, mpegs and data sets.  An easy to use application, DSpace has many features and tools for managing digital content and enabling digital preservation. DSpace stores any type of content and offers built-in workflows for content submission and review. Organizations can easily make their digital collections available on the Web using DSpace’s customizable end user interfaces along with many community-developed features and utilities.

DSpace is the software of choice for academic, non-profit, and commercial organizations building open access digital repositories (http://www.dspace.org/latest-release).  It is free and easy to install “out of the box” and completely customizable to fit the needs of any organization.  And with an ever-growing community of developers, committed to continuously expanding and improving the software, each DSpace installation benefits the next.

Open Knowledge Repository (OKR), The World Bank

The Open Knowledge Repository is the home for all of the World Bank’s research outputs and knowledge products. The Repository contains works (more than 2,100 books and papers) across a wide range of topics and all regions of the world. This includes the World Development Report, and other annual flagship publications, academic books, practitioner volumes, and the Bank’s publicly disclosed country studies and analytical reports. The repository also contains journal articles from the two World Bank journals WBRO and WBER, technical papers, economic and sector work studies, and multilingual content.

URL: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/

Related link: http://duraspace.org/world-bank-open-knowledge-repository-introduces-mobile-friendly-design; http://duraspace.org/node/2120

Repositorio Academico UPC, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas

The Peruvian University of Applied Sciences is a private and independent educational institution, opened in 1994, whose aim is to educate, carry out research and promote knowledge, culture and development in Peru.  UPC’s repository contains over 2,500 subjects and includes staff, undergraduate and graduate output.  It provides a single point of access for academic papers produced by faculty and students and provides increased visibility globally to the scholarly content produced at UPC.  

URL: http://repositorioacademico.upc.edu.pe/upc/

Related link: http://upc.edu.pe/

Winchester, MA  In celebration of Open Access Week 2014 October 20-24 the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization will offer a day-by-day  “sampler” highlighting institutions and organizations that are using the DSpace out-of the box repository application, the Fedora Repository platform, the VIVO networked semantic web application, and the easy-to-use, affordable, reliable, and most importantly hosted-by-us, DSpaceDirect service.

DuraSpace (http://duraspace.org) projects and services showcase institutions’ digital assets, enhance their discovery and ensure that they are included in the digital scholarly record of the future. All together there are more than 2,000 implementations of our open source software at institutions all over the world. We are proud to share just a few with you this week.