SPARC announces November digital repositories meeting

[Jennifer McLennan <jennifer@arl.org>]

For immediate release
April 7, 2008

For more information:
Jennifer McLennan
(202) 296-2296
jennifer@arl.org

SPARC ANNOUNCES NOVEMBER DIGITAL REPOSITORIES MEETING
Organizers put out call for presentation proposals

Washington, DC - April 7, 2008 - SPARC, in partnership with SPARC
Europe and SPARC Japan/National Institute of Informatics,
announces the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008, to be held
November 17-18, 2008 at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in
Baltimore, Maryland.

Coming on the heels of two groundbreaking developments - a recent
vote by Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences enabling the
university to offer access to their articles in an institutional
repository and implementation of a new National Institutes of
Health public access policy - the meeting will enable
stakeholders to explore next steps for the burgeoning open
archiving movement.

Librarians, researchers, funders, administrators, government
officials, publishers, and technologists from around the world
will share their experiences and best practices in building and
supporting institutional and disciplinary digital repositories.
The focus will be on effective engagement with scholars and
scientists to expand the sharing of research outputs via open
repositories.

The program, developed by a diverse and expert program committee,
will delve into four key areas: The Policy Environment, New
Horizons, Campus Publishing Strategies, and Value-Added Services.
These tracks will be supplemented with an Innovation Fair, where
new technologies, strategies, and approaches will be highlighted,
and a Practicum on marketing and advocacy.

The program committee invites proposals for presentations at the
November meeting. Visit the conference Web site at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/ir08/ for details on the program and how
to submit a proposal. The deadline for submissions is May 30,
2008.

Members of the 2008 Program Committee include: Jun Adachi (SPARC
Japan), Raym Crow (SPARC), Richard Fyffe (Grinnell College),
Susan Gibbons (University of Rochester), Melissa Hagemann (Open
Society Institute), Karla Hahn (Association of Research
Libraries), Bill Hubbard (SHERPA), Rick Johnson (SPARC), Michelle
Kimpton (DSpace Foundation), Norbert Lossau (Goettingen State and
University Library and DRIVER), Joyce Ogburn (University of
Utah), Terry Owen (University of Maryland, College Park),
Kathleen Shearer (Canadian Association of Research Libraries),
Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd.), Sean Thomas (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology), Susan Veldsman (eIFL), and Charles
Watkinson (The American School of Classical Studies at Athens).

This is the first North American SPARC digital repositories
conference since the organization's popular 2004 meeting, which
drew hundreds of participants from around the globe and set the
stage for some of the key developments of the past four years.

Registration will open in May. For more information, visit the
conference Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ir08/.
Companies or organizations interested in conference sponsorship
opportunities should contact Jennifer McLennan at
jennifer@arl.org.

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SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition),
with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance
of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to
create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC's
advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs
encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web
at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

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