RE: Self-archiving or third-party archiving? (RE: Authors and OA)

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Norbert--glad to hear from a sensible person. There has been altogether
too much work on definitions and not on the problems. I think this comes
in part because we have been trying to work around the publishers'
contracts, which necessarily makes for legalistic distinctions.

In practice, at least in the US, every faculty member can have his own
site at the university where he can post what he likes--pictures of his
dog, copies of his course notes, copies of his rejected papers, and
versions of his accepted one. Though some individuals host them on their
private machines, most run on a university computer. These sites are
uncontrollable and unstable.  When one changes university (as I did) the
site tends to disappear (as did mine).

So the real point is not what it's called, but that it's funded, and
organized, and controlled, and backed up on a reasonably permanent basis
by a reasonably trustworthy party.  Then the question is, can an academic
department or a single university be trusted? Stevan thinks yes, I think
possibly not, but we can't settle it by argument, only by doing it as best
we can. So Stevan is certainly right that (though there may be future
problems) we still must go ahead now under the best arrangements we can.

But I think that I and other librarians have the special role of keeping
the material getting to the users and getting it securely archived, no
matter what my fellow academics do. If they do it so well we don't need
to, great. If they mess it up, we'll still be there. As everyone knows,
this is not a particularly glamorous or exciting role. The appeal it has
for people, is that one is assuming ultimate responsibility.  You and your
library too show that they understand this. I wish more US libraries did.

And as a teacher of librarianship, I want to teach my students to care
about this and to do the same, because the scientific world will still be
there after my retirement and even my death.

Dr. David Goodman
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:05 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Self-archiving or third-party archiving? (RE: Authors and
OA)

... Thus why not interpreting institutional archiving as "self-archiving"?
The concept behind self-archiving is to have full control over the content
and this is certainly the case with all types of author and
faculty/institutional archiving. How institutions implement this policy
should be left to them. In Bielefeld we will continuously further develop
the current institutional repository to a full eScholarship repository,
hosted by the university library. This will not only guarantee the full
control but also the use of standards (like OAI-PMH) and the library is
willing to support this process actively. At our university the library is
not regarded as third party (on the same level as a publisher) but as
member of the same institution and as trusted repository.

Norbert Lossau