Richard Poynder, the astute, eloquent chronicler of scholarly
communication has done it again, with a shrewd, original and insightful
review of the short history of the institutional repository movement.
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/03/institutional-repositories-and-little.html
His conclusions are surprising, but (I think) very apt. His analysis,
among other things, go some way toward explaining why on earth a
"Repository Comparison" such as the one Rachel Heery cites below, would
have left the first and most widely used Repository software (GNU Eprints)
out of its comparison.
http://archives.eprints.org/index.php?action=browse#version
The answer is simple: Eprints is and always was very determinedly focused
on the goal of generating 100% OA, as soon as possible; it can of course
also do everything that the other IR softwares can do (and vice versa!),
but Eprints is focused on a very specific and urgent agenda: 100% OA
to each institution's own research article output. Those who prefer
leisurely fussing with the curation/preservation of arbitrary digital
contents of any and every description will of course have plenty to
keep them busy for decades. Eprints, in contrast, has an immediate,
already-overdue mission to fulfil, and it is becoming clearer and clearer
that -- with some prominent and invaluable exceptions -- the library
community has found other rows to hoe.
Richard has proposed that it might be time for a parting of paths between
the Generic Digital Curation/Preservation IR movement and the OA IR
movement, and he might be right. One has a diffuse, divergent goal, the
other a focused, convergent -- and urgent and immediately reachable --
goal, one that might now be hamstrung if it is subsumed under the diffuse,
divergent goal of the other.
For the details, please see Richard's article.
Stevan Harnad
On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Rachel Heery wrote:
> Thom Hickey's blog post on comparison of repository software features may
> be of interest, for the features considered as well as the 'scores'.
>
> see
> http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2006/03/repository_comp.html
>
> He does this comparison on a feature by feature basis in categories: Data
> Support, User Support, and Miscellaneous Infrastructure.
>
> Thom invites feedback, some people in the repository programme may be able
> to provide that for Fedora and DSpace
>
> Rachel
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Rachel Heery
> UKOLN, University of Bath tel: +44 (0)1225 386724
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk
Received on Thu Mar 02 2006 - 19:29:58 GMT