CHE alert: 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

OPI for those who have access to the online Chronicle of Higher Education.
See also last week's editorial piece by Malcolm Litchfield, Director of
the Ohio State U Press; he appears to suggest that many U presses will
shrink or die.

Ann Okerson

---------- Forwarded message ----------
This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com)

  From the issue dated July 5, 2002

  'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output

  By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

     Professors' office computers hold a wealth of original
  content: research articles, data sets,  field notes, images,
  and the like. Some of the material will be published in
  journals months or years after it is created, but even then it
  will probably be available only to the journals' subscribers.
  The rest will never see the light of day.

  Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by
  building "institutional repositories" online and inviting
  their professors to upload copies of their research papers,
  data sets, and other work. The idea is to gather as much of
  the intellectual output of an institution as possible in an
  easy-to-search online collection. One college has called its
  proposed repository a "super digital archive."

  Proponents say such superarchives could increase communication
  among scholars and spark greater levels of innovation,
  especially in the sciences. Some imagine a day when every
  research university gives its research away through the Web,
  allowing scholars and nonacademics to mine it for ideas and
  information.

  [SNIP]

  Where: http://web.mit.edu/dspace

  EPRINTS.ORG

  What: Free software developed at the University of
  Southampton, in Britain, to help individual scholars,
  departments, or universities create archives of research
  papers online.

  When: Available since 2000. An updated version was released
  this year.

  Where: http://www.eprints.org

  OPEN ARCHIVES INITIATIVE

  What: A series of "metadata" codes that librarians or others
  can attach to research papers to help search engines pull out
  desired information.

  When: Available since 1999. An updated version was released
  last month.

  Where: http://www.openarchives.org

   Source: Chronicle reporting

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 Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education