This morning’s reading was the admirably honest and straightforward “Taking EPrints to the Next Level” report. In a field drowning in useless happytalk, it’s good to see an effort as important as EPrints stepping back and taking a good hard look at its missteps as well as its (considerable) successes....
[J]ust as libraries charged gaily into running repositories without understanding how the entrenched structures and reward systems of academia would hinder them, repository software developers charge gaily into development without understanding how libraries work, or how repositories work inside libraries....
So here, free gratis and worth what you paid, are a few hints about libraries and repositories that ought to inform development and support decisions.
First, the usual open-source “scratch own itch” development model doesn’t work as well in libraries. The reason for this is that with a few exceptions, librarians are not programmers and do not think like them....
Second, the community-based development models that are so fashionable just at present in the repository community are equally if not more precarious. This just isn’t how libraries are accustomed to acquiring their software and having their needs met! The EPrints report goes into the results of this disconnect in considerable sheepish detail, so I don’t need to; I will merely remark that I’m not bullish on Fedora Commons or the DSpace Foundation....
Third, this is not a good time to be asking libraries for resources for repositories. Institutional repositories are in enough trouble as it is. MacKenzie Smith asked me rather peevishly on the DSpace tech list why I couldn’t just go get a developer assigned to the repository for a year. Trust me: if I could, I would....
I’m not alone in this. “Repositories operate on limited budgets, if they have specific budgets at all,” says the EPrints report (page 10). This squares with my experience —and if open-access advocates want to know why this is, they need only examine screeds from some of our more vocal advocates proclaiming that repositories are cheap and easy and fill themselves like magic. That (false) ideology is now coming back to bite would-be repository communities hard.
Fourth, a good many library technologists hide themselves —from their administrations, from their fellows, from the world— because the risk is too great of being shut down abruptly if one is discovered doing this sort of work. I wish I were making this up, but I’m not....
Fifth, most libraries don’t have any library technologists. Any. At all....
Update. Also see the response by Steve Hitchcock of the EPrints Community.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/12/2007 04:31:00 PM.
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.
