While I can see that there has to be a preservation solution for other
material, I wouldn't want to see it clogging up our repository here at
the OU. As far as I'm concerned the day we start diluting our content
with lecture notes, anniversary photos and corporate publications is the
day we loose our credibility as a serious alternative to
subscription-based literature searching. The focus of providing open
access to peer-reviewed research should not be clouded. Anything else
that needs preserving should be housed separately.


Colin Smith
Research Repository Manager
Open Research Online (ORO)
Open University Library
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA

Tel: +44(0)1908 332971
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://oro.open.ac.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 22 October 2008 18:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Tracking Open Access Institutional Repository Growth
Worldwide

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Alastair Dunning wrote:

> One of the reason that the Cambridge number is so high is because they
> use DSpace for all kinds of content, not just journal articles.
>
> Looking through the collections (http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/) there
are
> corporate publications from the Fitzwilliam Museum, archaeological
data,
> videos from lectures on sustainable development, Ph.D. theses on
> material science, photos from an anniversary party for the chemical
> engineering department. There are also thousands of photographs from
the
> Scott Polar Institute's digitisation project of historic polar images.
>
> Using an IR for this much broader purpose not only preserves a
valuable
> preservation facility for these types of grey literature and rich
> content, but also engages the university community much more quickly.
> The function of an IR is much more readily apparent when somebody
> realises they need to have a home for these types of valuable content.

Alternatively, the filling of an IR with all these other kinds of
content -- not OA's target content -- for all these other purposes,
masks how well the IR is actually doing on OA content (and, worse,
distracts from the goal of providing OA's actual target content).

Stevan Harnad

> Alastair
>
> Alastair Dunning
> JISC Digitisation Programme Manager
> t: 0203 006 6065
>
> JISC Office (1st Floor)
> Brettenham House (South Entrance)
> 5 Lancaster Place
> London WC2E 7EN
>
> http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation/
> http://availableonline.wordpress.com/
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Repositories discussion list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> [log in to unmask]
> Sent: 22 October 2008 16:47
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Tracking Open Access Institutional Repository Growth
> Worldwide
>
>
> DSpace@Cambridge 192,000 items!  presumably there is a story behind
that
> amazing figure??
>
> Charles
>
>
> Professor Charles Oppenheim
> Head
> Department of Information Science
> Loughborough University
> Loughborough
> Leics LE11 3TU
>
> Tel 01509-223065
> Fax 01509 223053
> e mail [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Repositories discussion list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 22 October 2008 16:34
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Tracking Open Access Institutional Repository Growth
Worldwide
>
>
> (Thanks to Peter Suber
>
<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/10/another-way-to-monitor-growt
> h-of-green.html>  and Charles Bailey
> <http://www.escholarlypub.com/digitalkoans/2008/10/21/repository>  for
> drawing attention to this item.)
>
> Repository Records Statistics <http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/>
>
> Chris Keene <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> This website provides data on the number of records in UK
Institutional
> Respositories over time. The data was collected from late summer 2006,
> and has been collected weekly ever since. Since August 2008 is has
> collected data for Institutional Repositories worldwide.
>
> The data is from the excellent ROAR <http://roar.eprints.org/>  based
at
> the University of Southampton (ECS).
>
> Where to start? Have a look at the table below (first link), it shows
> the number of records in each repository (registered in ROAR) for each
> week since July 2006. You can reorder the table, download the data
(e.g.
> in to excel) and select individual repositories. Also check out the
> comparison page, which can be reached by first selectinig an IR on the
> right and then selecting an IR to compare with. Finally the info page
> <http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/info.php>  is worth a read for details
> of what you are actually looking at, and issues with the data and
> presentation.
>
> *	Table showing number of records in instiutional repositories
> over time (United Kingdom)
> <http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/table.php?country=uk>
> *	Click on one of the Repositories on the right, for info about
> that IR and the ability to compare it with others. (see an example
here
>
<http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/compare.php?id1=http://eprints.sussex.ac
>
.uk/20061117025123&id2=http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/20061117025144&id3=http%
> 3A%2F%2Fepubs.surrey.ac.uk%2F20060504104814> )
> *	Table view of random guess at totals of full text items in UK
> IRs over time (very experiemental, i.e. rubbish)
> <http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/fulltext1a.php> . This table is still
UK
> only.
>
> Read more: Introduction, details, help and more
> <http://www.nostuff.org/ircount/info.php>
>
>
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