Search

This article reviews the E-Prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) open access archive. E-LIS is part of the Research in Computing, Library and Information Science (RCLIS) project, an international effort to organize and disseminate scholarly papers in librarianship and related fields. E-LIS uses open source applications, and joins a growing number of OAI-compliant services dedicated to providing free access to scholarly information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report on the work of the JISC-funded RepoMMan project, which is developing a tool that will allow users to interact with a Fedora-based institutional repository. The tool facilitates user interaction with the repository whilst developing content, using a browser interface, and will bring partial automation to the process of assigning metadata to objects, as they are made accessible to a wider audience. Design/methodology/approach - The development of the RepoMMan tool is user-needs-driven and the project team has conducted face-to-face interviews and an online survey with potential research users. The findings from these parallel approaches have provided an insight into the needs of this group. Similar work will be undertaken with potential users in the teaching and learning community, and in administration. The RepoMMan tool utilises BPEL to orchestrate a range of web services. Findings - Potential user needs are many and varied. The RepoMMan tool will be the basis for flexible user interaction with a repository during the development of materials; the web-service approach also allows for the development of a range of ways to access repository objects appropriate to the needs of the content. Originality/value - The results in this paper highlighted the potential value of a repository for general day-to-day purposes: the RepoMMan workflow tool is being designed to adapt to these purposes as required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Institutional Repository at Cranfield University - Cranfield QUEprints (http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk). Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes the methodologies involved in acquiring research output, and covers advocacy strategies, policies, and also provides data on cost and usage. Findings - The Cranfield QUEprints is a managed repository where the archiving is undertaken by library staff. This has proved to be a successful method of acquiring research outputs and increasing content. Selected methods of persuading academics to contribute to the IR, including personal contact, and marketing information, have also proved successful. Research limitations/implications - That the report is specific to an institution, but provides experiences that will be generally applicable. Originality/value - The paper provides reassurance that, when it comes to populating an institutional repository, an alternative method to self-archiving can be successful and cost-effective. It is hoped that the descriptions provided in the paper will provide encouragement to institutions currently without an IR that there are no insurmountable barriers to the development of such a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to report on the impact and cost/benefit of implementing three - EPrints digital repositories at the University of Otago, and to encourage others to follow suit. Design/methodology/approach - Three repositories were successfully implemented at the University of Otago using existing commodity hardware and free open source software. The first pilot repository was implemented within ten days, and is now a fully functional system that is being championed for institutional-wide use by the University Library. The other two repositories emerged from different community needs. One is academic, concerned with collecting and researching indigenous content; the other is designed to preserve and manage collective memory and heritage content for a small rural community. Findings - The paper shows that digital repositories can be established quickly and effectively with surprisingly few resources; readily incorporate any kind of extant digital content, or non-digital material that is converted to electronic form; meet multifarious needs, from academic institutions seeking to enhance research visibility and impact, to individuals and small communities collecting and preserving their unique memory and heritage records; and establish connectivity with the global community from the moment they go live. Practical implications - The technology and global support community have matured to a state where a fully-featured repository can be quickly and easily implemented. Originality/value - This paper describes the short history, development and impact of the first live repositories of their kind in New Zealand. Their utility and implications for the unique communities that have given rise to them are also explored, by way of encouraging others to take up the digital challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report on Project for Electronic Publications and Institutional Archives (PEPIA), which is a government-sponsored Norwegian effort, to provide institutional repositories to multiple Norwegian universities, university colleges and other research institutions through a consortium managed by BIBSYS. Design/methodology/approach - Some aspects of the project are headlined to give a brief introduction to the PEPIA project and the problems associated with creating a consortium with multiple institutions on one software platform. Findings - The ongoing project PEPIA has shown that it is possible for multiple organizations to join forces and create a consortium to develop an institutional repository on one software platform. After an initial requirements specification phase it was found that most institutions have the same basic requirements, even though they may seem different. The requirements, besides basic registration and searching, are mostly centered on integration with library systems, research documentation systems, national OAI harvesters and preferably learning management systems. The experience with the freely available DSpace software is mostly good, but the work of integrating the software into an already existing software development platform and production environment was more complex than estimated. The user management mechanisms in DSpace is too simplistic but the development of a more advanced rule-based access mechanisms for collections has resulted in a lot easier management by users, and can further lower the operating costs for the members of the consortium. Originality/value - The paper provides an overview of the PEPIA project, which enables more and more institutions to see the benefits of working together towards better solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper seeks to discuss a grant-funded digitization project for unique Afghanistan gray literature. It aims to address the digitization tasks, workflow, challenges, and solutions. Persistent identifiers, file-naming conventions, page-naming rules, and a digitization management system are discussed in detail since they were critical to the success of the project. Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes the unique requirements of the project, and analyzes difficult issues related to the separation of pre-digitization and post-digitization in two remote locations. The approach includes persistent identifiers, file-naming rules, page-naming conventions and a digitization management system. After one and a half years of operation, the approach has been effective and efficient. Findings - The paper analyzes the unique challenges for a long-distance collaboration on digitization. Pre-digitization and digital imaging were carried out in Kabul, Afghanistan, with all the physical materials located there, while post-digitization and quality control were performed in Tucson, Arizona. The paper found that several components such as persistent identifiers, file-naming conventions, page-naming rules, and digitization management system were critical to the success of the project. Practical implications - The project demonstrates an approach to address a unique digitization project due to the separation of pre-digitization and post-digitization. In addition, the approach has served other digitization projects well. Originality/value - The paper was written for both project managers and technical staff. Project managers can find out the usefulness of a digitization management system and understand digitization issues; while technical staff can find interests in a persistent identifier scheme, file-naming conventions and page-naming rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the information about the E-prints project in Librarianship and Information Science (E-LIS) experience. Design/methodology/approach - Descriptive method with informative scope. Findings - E-LIS had generated a new international view of the intellectual production in Library and Information Sciences (LIS) that include information professionals from emergent and developing countries. Practical implications - Contribute to understand the real dimension of the intellectual production in US. Originality/value - This paper is of special interest for US research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - Rice University has adopted the DSpace platform for its institutional repository, but has pushed the traditional limits of how that is defined. To accommodate a wider range of scholarship that includes digitized multimedia source materials integrated with educational modules and geospatial resources, the technical infrastructure of DSpace has been enriched. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the developments and decisions required to support this range of scholarship beyond born-digital scholarly pre-prints and reports. Design/methodology/approach - This paper presents the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA), a digital archive that makes use of DSpace to preserve and present images and texts, as a case study in using DSpace as both a repository and archive framework. TIMEA integrates two additional systems for presenting digital content, Connexions, which focuses on educational modules, and ArcIMS, which makes available dynamic GIS (Geographic Information Systems) maps. Findings - Although DSpace was originally intended to be an "institutional repository" for born-digital materials such as scholarly reports, it can also serve as an archive for digitized items such as XML-encoded texts and digital images. However, making DSpace work as a digital archive for TIMEA has required customization, including building-in XML support, working with DSpace's flat metadata structure, implementing a customized, XML-driven user interface using Manakin, and performing additional programming to integrate functionality for GIS and educational modules. Practical implications - The practical implications of using DSpace as both institutional repository and digital archive have required a number of modifications, including additional functional software development, reworking the metadata structure, redefining repository policies, format access modifications, and customizing the look and feel of the repository. Originality/value - The discussion in this paper, of the challenges and decisions inherent in using an institutional repository with a digital archive will assist other institutions working to integrate resources as will the portal structure to facilitate harvesting from multiple relevant repositories and direct users to digital resources independent of their native repositories. Likewise, enhancements to DSpace, such as support for XML document presentation, are contributions to the institutional repository community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a short history of the first year of operation of an institutional repository (IR) at a midwestern state university. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is anecdotal, reviewing aims, rationales, and strategies, and offering advice and some counter-intuitive lessons. Findings - The paper finds that voluntary self-archiving by faculty or campus publishers is exceptional or rare, but there are other ways of populating an IR with valuable content. IR's should seek original material, including new dissertations, as well as previously published articles. IR's should offer a variety of services to make faculty participation as effortless as possible. IR's can increase usage by efforts directed at publicizing their resources and offerings. Research limitations/implications - The paper concerns one institution, but the challenges faced are common to all new university institutional repositories. Originality/value - This paper is a useful source of information for those considering, planning, or operating an institutional repository. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to chronicle the Lamar Soutter Library's effort to build an educational image database, and how the project developed into an institutional repository. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is divided into three phases and highlights the organizational, political, technological and resource issues that are unique to a specialized library with a medium-sized staff, lacking the resources of a traditional university campus. The case concludes with a list of barriers and facilitators to success and a summary of lessons learned. Findings - The paper finds that a library with limited staff, funding, and systems development resources can initiate and support an institutional repository. Facilitators of success include clear lines of authority, a strong champion, and the appropriate technology for the project. Originality/value - This paper serves as an example to libraries that are in the beginning phases of developing an institutional repository by discussing the barriers to and facilitators of success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits and challenges of creating a shared institutional repository and to, describe the process by which a consortium was able to establish such a service. Design/methodology/approach - A case study is presented outlining the process through which the Washington Research Library Consortium selected and implemented the DSpace institutional repository software in a shared information technology environment. The issues confronted in dealing with a multi-institutional implementation are examined through both a detailed description of the implementation and a generalized description of the challenges the consortium faced. Findings - The paper finds that while a shared implementation of an institutional repository does present significant challenges that would not be present for a single institution, the collaborative approach also presents significant benefits in drawing on the breadth of expertise available among the Consortium and utilizing a shared information technology infrastructure. Originality/value - Institutional repositories have generally been implemented within the context of a single institution. An alternative model is described that draws on the experience and expertise of multiple institutions to achieve a common goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This short study aims to describe the participation of the National Library of the Czech Republic in the project TELplus. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reports the results of project TELplus and describes the challenges of the project. Findings - Documents OCR production in the National Library of the Czech Republic. Originality/value - The study provides general information about the project TELplus and its subsequent participation in the framework of the National Library of the Czech Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric indicator and to conduct an analysis of citations per publication of all horizontal gene transfer-related publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI). A systematic search was performed using the SCI for publications during the period 1991-2005. Design/methodology/approach - The data were based on the online version of the Science Citation Index (SCI), Web of Science. Analyzed parameters included authorship, patterns of international collaboration, journal, language, document type, number of times cited, author, and KeyWords Plus. Findings - The USA and Germany produced 57 percent of the total articles and 77 percent of the total times cited in three years after publication. In addition, a simulation model was applied to describe the relationship between the cumulative number of citations and the article life. Originality/value - This is one of the first studies that uses analysis of citations per publication, defined as the ratio of the number of citations per publication in a certain period, to assess the impact relative to the entire field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article features an interview with Jane Greenberg, Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ms Greenberg discusses metadata education, her research projects, and the future of the Semantic Web. She describes the Metadata Generation Research and Automatic Metadata Generation Applications projects, the ways library school curricula have changed and will likely change in the near future, and the influence Dublin Core has had on her career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of current uses of cloud computing (CC) services in libraries, address a gap identified in integrating cloud storage in IaaS level, and show how to use EC2 tools for easy backup and resource monitoring. Design/methodology/approach – The article begins a literature review of CC uses in libraries, organized at the SaaS, PaaS and IaaS levels. The author presents his experience of integrating cloud storage services S3 and GCS. In addition, he also shows how to use virtual machine EC2 tools for backup and monitoring resources. Findings – The article describes a case study of integrating cloud storage using S3 and GCS. S3 can be integrated with any program whether the program runs on cloud or locally, while GCS is only good for applications running on GAE. The limitation of the current GCS approach makes it hard to use for a stand-alone cloud storage. The author also discusses virtual machines using EC2 and its related tools for backup, increase storage, and monitoring service. These services make system administration easier as compared to the traditional approach. Research limitations/implications – The article presents current CC uses in libraries at the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS levels. CC services are changing quickly. For example, Google has stated that its APIs are experimental. Readers should be aware of this. Practical implications – The author shows his experience of integrating cloud storage services. Readers can understand the similarities and differences between S3 and GCS. In addition, readers can learn the advantages and concerns associated with implementing cloud computing. Readers are encouraged to consider questions such as content, skills, costs, and security. Originality/value – There are many uses of CC services in libraries. However, gaps are identified: in IaaS cloud storage, a few libraries used Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure, but none explored using Google Cloud Storage (GCS); none provided implementation details, difficulties, and comparisons of S3 and GCS; and a few articles have briefly discussed implementations on Amazon EC2, but have not provided specific details about upgrade and backup. This article addresses those gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educating researchers on how to use archival and manuscript materials and repositories is an important component in any records program. This is more important now that increasing amounts of information concerning archives and manuscripts appear daily on the web. Twenty years ago, all use of archives and manuscripts was mediated by reference personnel. This is not true today. However, the archivists' paradigm for educating researchers has not shifted accordingly. Furthermore, archivists do not have the defined basic competencies that might comprise "information literacy for primary sources". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]