What does it mean for the scholarly community when new tools change not only the method of dissemination but the very creation of scholarship itself?...And how can librarians most effectively support scholars in an increasingly digitally based environment?...Several [speaker] touched on the need for standardization to make it easier to search and retrieve documents. Corey Keith and Morgan Cundiff of the Library of Congress discussed the creation of a Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) profile-validation tool that will facilitate interoperable exchange of METS documents by enforcing standard rules. Sayeed Choudhury and Tim DiLauro of The Johns Hopkins University proposed that their colleagues consider the benefits of using one "agnostic" interface for repository access rather than several different interfaces customized to various applications. To this end, with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, they are conducting an evaluation of repository software and services. Tito Sierra and Steve Morris of North Carolina State University discussed the work under way in their institution toward developing a "single search box" for Web site searching. These and other sessions focused on ways to increase interoperability among institutions so that resources can move fluidly from one repository to another. There has also been discussion in the community, reflected at the forum, about the creation of global repositories. One way of accomplishing this is to house all materials at a single site. Another way is to gather links to items stored at any number of participating repositories in a central area --a "commons"-- for searching. These links then serve as pathways to the digital items, wherever they may be housed. Charlotte Hess of Indiana University spoke of the Digital Library of the Commons, which she directs. They have found the "library of the commons" model to be unsustainable in practice, given the current state of technology.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/13/2005 08:54:00 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.
