The University of Michigan Library has launched its new Deep Blue service that provides public online access to more than 24,000 items of research, a database that will grow as U-M researchers continue to add their work.
The service is available to the broader academic community and the general public and provides free, online and fully searchable results in a wide variety of research areas...."Increasingly, universities around the world are establishing services such as Deep Blue to disseminate research results," said James Hilton, associate provost for academic, information and instructional technology affairs, and interim University librarian.
"In addition, both public and private funding sources have begun to require public access to the results of research they support. Congress recognized the importance of open access to taxpayer-funded research by instructing the National Institutes of Health to encourage grant recipients to deposit published articles into open access databases like Deep Blue."
While access is Deep Blue’s main mission, the service also is committed to act as steward for the entirety of the scholarly and cultural information produced by U-M faculty, staff and students, he said.
The site is a customized version of the DSpace software created by MIT and Hewlett-Packard. It was designed and is managed by U-M’s Library Information Technology group, standard-setters for quality research and innovation via initiatives ranging from Making of America to the Google Print project.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
