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On Wed, 2 Aug 2006, Sarah Taylor wrote: > > Please forgive me for what I am sure is a ludicrous question, > but is there any particular reason why we can't think of an > institutional repository - i.e. the same institutional > repository - as being a mechanism for both preservation AND for > maximising access to research? Why must we have one for one > purpose and one for another? Surely these two intended > functions of an IR can complement one another? Sarah, From my point of view, the problem is one of vocabulary. We are in the process of setting up all of our digital preservation mechanisms here, and we are having a tough time agreeing on the difference between storage for the purpose of maximizing access to scholarly research and output (which I have been calling institutional repository) and storage of, say, scanned images to be used in an art class. Many librarians I've met recently, not just at my university, have been calling all digital storage "institutional repository" -- that is, the repository you have at your institution is your institutional repository. Moreover, we are having some dilemma over whether or not faculty research that they want locked up so nobody can see it is something that belongs in an institutional repository. I would argue it doesn't, but at my institution I think my opinion is in the minority. While it may seem silly to worry so much about the vocabulary, the fact is that institutional repository as a phrase, as opposed to is a concept, is a big buzzword in universities right now. I have definitely got the go-ahead to work on an institutional repository, but what that actually means is a very different question. Just my two cents, -Deborah -- Deborah Kaplan Digital Initiatives Librarian Brandeis University