Abstract: The future strategies for opening science have become important to libraries which serve scientific institutions by providing institutional repository infrastructures and services. Vilnius University Library provides such an infrastructure for Vilnius University, which is the biggest higher education institution in Lithuania (with more than 20,200 students, 1,330 academic staff members, and 450 researchers ), and manages services and infrastructure of the national open access repository eLABa and the national open access data archive MIDAS. As the new platforms of these repositories began operating in the beginning of 2015, new policies and routines for organizing work with scientific publications and data had to be implemented. This meant new roles for the Library and librarians, too. The University Senate approved the new Regulations of the Library on 13 June 2017 with the task to develop the scholarly communication tools dedicated to sustaining open access to information and open science. Thus, Vilnius University Library performs the leading role in opening science by providing strategic insights and solutions for development of services dedicated to researchers, students and the public in Lithuania. As it was not presented properly at the international level before, this article presents the case of Vilnius University Library which actively cooperates with other Lithuanian academic institutions, works in creating and coordinating policies, conducts research on the improvements and services of eLABa and MIDAS, and suggests and implements the integral solutions for opening science.
Category Archives: oa.repositories.consortial
Shared research repository announcement – The British Library
“The British Library, working with a group of cultural and memory organisations, is piloting a shared repository service for research content built on an open source platform. The repository aims to increase the visibility and impact of research outputs, making the knowledge generated by cultural institutions easier to explore and use for new research.
The Library has appointed open access publisher Ubiquity Press to build the pilot repository. It will initially be populated with research outputs produced by the project’s partners, the British Museum, Tate, National Museums Scotland and MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), as well as the British Library’s own open research content….
The repository will be built using Samvera Hyku, a new, rapidly developing open source repository software in which multitenancy is a key feature. Hyku – developed initially in response to a call by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a National Digital Platform – has a global developer community behind it who have made huge progress in a relatively short time….
Why So Many Repositories? Examining the Limitations and Possibilities of the Institutional Repositories Landscape
Abstract: Academic libraries fail to take advantage of the network effect because they manage too many digital repositories locally. While this argument applies to all manner of digital repositories, this article examines the fragmented environment of institutional repositories, in which effort and costs are duplicated, numerous software platforms and versions are managed simultaneously, metadata are applied inconsistently, users are served poorly, and libraries are unable to take advantage of collective data about content and users. In the meantime, commercial IR vendors and academic social networks have shown much greater success with cloud-based models. Collectively, the library profession has enough funding to create a national-level IR, but it lacks the willingness to abandon local control.
Open Access Shared Repository for the British Library
“The British Library intends to establish a research repository infrastructure to support a number of services, including a new institutional repository for our own research outputs, a new solution for two or more research-supporting digital collections managed by the Library, and as a shared service for the research outputs of other similarly placed organisations.
This Invitation to Tender is for a Pilot Project to build, configure and host a shared repository to allow us to test the concept and workflows in co-operation with a small number of partner external organisations. We expect the Pilot Project to last for 12 months from date of award, followed by a further 3 months of system support….”
Innovating for Impact: The Next Evolution of Library Consortia
“One of the most common approaches is centralized consortium support or management for member library digital repository platforms, which allows institutions to showcase and disseminate student and faculty scholarly and creative works. A precursor to the broader scope of current institutional repositories is seen in shared digital collections of theses and dissertations (ETDs), with OhioLINK’s ETD Center (created in 2001) one of the best examples of a library consortium-supported ETD repository. Other regional consortia or state university systems (e.g., Texas Digital Library, California Digital Library) support similar shared ETD repositories. Most consortia-supported digital repositories now focus on creating institutionallybranded portals (rather than shared collections) that include faculty publications, student scholarship, and other unique and locally-created or curated content. Digital repositories are supported by different types of academic library consortia and library systems. For example, the California State University (CSU) system’s Digital Library Services offers centrally-supported repository services called ScholarWorks to all CSU libraries, while the British Columbia Electronic Library Network (BCELN)–a consortium that includes members ranging from small technical colleges to large research universities–provides a shared repository platform that offers individually branded portals and federated search across all member repositories. Both CSU and BCELN use open source platforms (CSU is currently migrating to Samvera/Hyrax, while BCELN uses Islandora), leveraging shared, centralized support to configure and manage software that would not necessarily be feasible (or desirable) for individual members to maintain on their own. The growth in academic library engagement with open access publishing is also driving interest in consortia support and management of platforms that facilitate formal publishing processes beyond the simple dissemination of a repository or digital asset system….”
Law Commons | Digital Commons Network™
The Bepress Digital Commons Network devoted to law, with deposits from more than 350 institutions.
Welcome to Louisiana Digital Library | Louisiana Digital Library
“The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online library of more than 144,000 digital items from Louisiana archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories, making unique historical treasure accessible to students, researchers, and the general public in Louisiana and across the globe. The items in the Louisiana Digital Library are as diverse and interesting as the people and places in Louisiana, with photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and more documenting the state’s history and culture….”
New platform for Louisiana Digital Library | LSU Libraries News & Notes
“The LSU Libraries has developed a new online platform for the Louisiana Digital Library (LDL). Based on the open-source Islandora digital library software, the LSU Libraries Technology Initiatives team developed the updates to include enhanced features, allowing for greater access and discovery to the 171 collections of the LDL. Patrons can now enjoy the large image viewer with zoom capabilities, full text searching within documents, side-by-side viewing options for audio and text transcriptions, and easy mobile access….Seventeen institutions currently contribute photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and more that document history and culture to the LDL. The LDL is managed by the Louisiana Digital Consortium (LDC), which consists of libraries, museums, archives, historical groups, and other institutions across Louisiana….”
A consortial repository
“Charles Bailey has a useful two-part introduction (one and two) to OhioLINK‘s Digital Resource Commons (DRC) and Ohio Digital Commons for Education (ODCE). The DRC is essentially an OAI-compliant, open-access repository, built on Fedora, serving the 84 colleges and universities in the OhioLINK consortium. From the DRC home page: ‘OhioLINK’s Digital Resource Commons (DRC) is a content management service and repository that ingests, preserves, presents, and mediates administration of the educational and research materials of participating institutions. With the capability to store and deliver a virtually unlimited variety of digital file types and formats (including text, data sets, image, audio, video, streaming video, multimedia presentations, animations, etc.) the DRC is positioned to capture digital content from student and faculty researchers as it is produced and return it to users of the DRC upon request. Content is stored on enterprise-class servers and storage networks located close to the internet backbone, ensuring maximum availability and speed. OhioLINK’s storage area network allows virtually unlimited storage space with massive offsite tape and disk backup systems ensuring the safety and security of content. Researchers can be assured that their materials will be available for the next generation through a rigorous schedule of media refreshing and a comprehensive catalog of content types that will enable digital preservationists to apply appropriate treatments to digital materials.’ …”
“Something Old, Something New , Something Bold, Something Cool: A Marriage of Two Repositories” by Carol Ann Davis and Jason Boczar
Abstract: “For the past several years, many libraries have been developing institutional repositories to house their open access publishing efforts to both showcase and preserve their faculty’s research. Some of those same libraries have been building sizable digital collections, often built from digitized versions of materials in their special collections. So what happens when you put these two groups together? The University of South Florida Tampa Library did exactly that by creating a new Digital Scholarship Services unit. The union of these two groups has created new synergies between staff in complementary areas of the library, as we combine unique skill sets from each group to offer new services to the faculty. This presentation will discuss why this change was made, examine some of the benefits and growing pains of this change, and showcase some of the unusual projects that have resulted. For example, a group of faculty from the College of Education has a multimodal project featuring new methodological approaches for analyzing various formats such as websites, images, and film. The library also has two research associates who are archaeologists creating three dimensional representations of artifacts for cultural heritage preservation that are now embedded with metadata in the repository. Creating such collections not only highlights the university’s work but provides materials professors can use to enhance their course curricula and use technology to engage students in new and innovative ways.”
Europe joins forces to create largest ever shared data repository for researchers | Horizon: the EU Research & Innovation magazine | European Commission
“World-leading research institutes have agreed to join forces with funding agencies and policymakers to create the European Open Science Cloud, the largest shared data repository in history.”
European Open Science Cloud, pilot project
“EOSCpilot Mission
Facilitating access of researchers across all scientific disciplines to data
Establishing a governance and business model that sets the rules for the use of EOSC
Creating a cross-border and multi-disciplinary open innovation environment for research data, knowledge and services
Establishing global standards for interoperability for scientific data…”
Consortial routes to effective repositories
Abstract: A consortial approach to the establishment of repository services can help a group of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to share costs, share technology and share expertise. Consortial repository work can tap into existing structures, or it can involve new groupings of institutions with a common interest in exploring repository development. This Briefing Paper outlines some of the potential benefits of collaborative repository activity, and highlights some of the technical and organisational issues for consideration.
HARP : a shared repository project for university libraries in Hiroshima prefecture
A slide presentaiton on HARP, “a shared repository project for University Libraries in Hiroshima Prefecture.”
rian.ie – Home
“RIAN began as an investigation into institutional repositories by the Irish Universities Association Librarians’ Group in 2005. It tasked a sub-group to look at the options and make recommendations. The sub-group advised that a national network of local repositories, with a national harvester to aggregate their content, would comprise the most efficient infrastructure. In 2006, the IUA Librarians successfully applied for support from the Department of Education and Science’s Strategic Innovation Fund which is administered by the Higher Education Authority. The group was awarded €1.6 million, half of it to be found in matching funding. The project began in April 2007 and was completed, within its three year schedule, by March 2010.
The project aim was to harvest to one portal the contents of the Institutional Repositories of the seven university libraries, in order to make Irish research material more freely accessible, and to increase the research profiles of individual researchers and their institutions. As RIAN developed further, other Irish research repositories were added, and more continue to be added, so that RIAN will truly be the portal to Irish research.
The aggregation of this content will have significant benefits. It will be the primary source for Irish Open Access research publications. Jointly agreed metadata standards will facilitate more accurate searching and retrieval. The aggregated content will make further value-added features, such as statistical analysis, possible. RIAN will allow other agencies to harvest normalised metadata for better search results. As RIAN expanded to include repositories other than those of the seven universities, the need for a revised governance model became apparent. In 2014 RIAN was restructured under a new Business Model more representative of all the RIAN membership, as illustrated below. Work is still ongoing to finalise the Terms of Reference and Procedures….”