Digital media are increasingly replacing paper-based formats as the means of disseminating and storing knowledge. This knowledge is the outcome of many different types of activity and includes research papers, teaching programmes, scientific data, digitised library collections, and administrative records. It may be produced in a variety of formats such as text, images, video and audio files.
While the creation of digital material has been accelerating dramatically, less attention has been paid to the ways in which its content can be managed for the long term. Without such management there is a real danger that important material will be irretrievably lost, either because it was not captured in the first place or because it was stored without adequate provision for problems arising from software and hardware obsolescence. Digital institutional repositories are now being developed as one way of addressing the problem, to preserve and provide open access to the intellectual output of the institution.
DSpace is one such system. It is a digital repository software platform, originally developed by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories, released as Open Source software in November 2002 and already implemented by over one hundred institutions world-wide. Cambridge University Library and MIT Libraries are collaborating in a joint three-year research project, DSpace@Cambridge, to create an institutional repository for Cambridge University and to share in a development programme for the DSpace software.
This paper will report on the Cambridge project, examining technical and organisational policy issues. It will describe DSpace's potential both as an open archive to promote the dissemination of scientific literature and as a long-term repository. It will discuss the processes through which material is acquired for the repository, exploring cultural differences between medicine and other subject disciplines. It will also report on progress in developing DSpace's ability to support virtual learning environments and to provide digital preservation functionality.
[NB. This paper is relevant to two sections:
“Hybrid & Digital Libraries: Archives – Traditional & Electronic”
“Scientific Publications & Evaluation: Open Archives”]
See:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dspace/
http://www.dspace.org/
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