Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, June 01, 2006

IR managers talk shop

Andy Patrizio, Taming the Digital Beast, Campus Technology, June 1, 2006. Excerpt:
Is your digital institutional repository out of control? It’s time to step back and look at contribution, access, rights, storage, and functionality --issues you don’t want to monkey with....

Sharing content has been a leading driver of the digital repository initiative, because, simply put, unshared knowledge isn’t knowledge --it’s a secret....

“It’s still a real push to get people to contribute material to a repository, based on the sense that they will be sharing it,” explains [Scott Siddall, assistant provost and director of Instructional Technology at Dennison University]. “They’ll say, ‘I have a unique collection of such-and-such. Why do I care if my colleague at XYZ University wants access? Why should I take three months to make it available?’” The solution, he maintains, is a different kind of carrot. “Institutions have to say, ‘If you create a unique collection, digitize it, put it up online, and let people access it, that is scholarship; that is valued, and we’re going to count it in promotion and tenure.’ Then people will put it on their radar screen,” says Siddall....