Jason Kucsma, Preserving the Digital Preservation Conversation, Jason Kucsma, October 29, 2008. An article-length proposal of an OA repository for literature on digital preservation: the Digital Preservation Resource Repository (DiPPR). Excerpt:
The rapidly changing landscape and relative “newness” of the digital preservation field...affords scholars, practitioners, and students the opportunity to swap roles more fluidly than virtually any other profession. Such role-swapping, however, demands a thorough, centralized repository of published literature on digital preservation theory and best practices....
Adopting a documentation strategy introduced by Helen Samuels (1986), this repository would serve as a historical record of where the field has been, a current record of where the field stands, and a projection of where the digital preservation movement is heading....
Documenting an entire field is not without its challenges....However, now is an appropriate time to cast a wide net on published work on digital preservation literature while the scope of work is relatively manageable....
A centralized open access repository would aid in eliminating geographic and institutional barriers that may be seen as impeding the progress of the digital preservation movement as a whole.
In an attempt to reign in such a seemingly large body of knowledge, the Digital Preservation Resource Repository (DiPRR, pronounced “dipper”) will focus entirely on scholarly works published in online and print journals and those additional works published independently by organizations that self-identify digital preservation as their primary concern....
Comment. It's a great idea. But there already is an OA repository for literature on digital preservation, ERPAePRINTS. From the ERPAePRINTS front page:
The Electronic Resource Preservation and Access Network (ERPANET) and the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) have established this Open Archives ePrint service in conjunction with DAEDALUS to make international digital curation and preservation research outputs visible, accessible and usable over time.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/29/2008 11:16:00 AM.
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.
