Reading thoughts, November 12

* Information providers have attempted (for many years now) to transform the variety of digital publications and collections into "true" digital libraries.
* There is a big difference between simply providing access to digital collections and offering digital library services.
* 1994: federal programming for digital libraries, called the Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI-1), funded six projects in the digital libraries. 1998: DLI-2, more funding added for more projects.
* With the advent of DLI, three interested parties came forth: librarians, publishers, and computer scientists.
* The concept of digital libraries has been hard to accept for some (more traditional) librarians. The feeling of "loss" with regards to their collections (and their non-physicality) gave many librarians pause.
* Journal publishers took the opportunity to charge elevated prices for their digital publications; this resulted in many libraries having to reevaluate their subscriptions and make cancellation decisions.
* Even though the collections look different, the work of the librarian is still basically the same: organization, collation, and distribution.
* Institutional repositories are a great way for universities to take control of scholarly publishing on campus. Costs have dropped dramatically, making institutional repositories possible for most colleges to afford to set up.
* MIT developed D-Space, an institutional repository software that is open-source and widely distributed, in 2003. It is not the only software available, but is the most widely used.
* Can be termed as "a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members." (Clifford Lynch, "Institutional Repositories," 2003)
* Once a university's IR is set up, they might consider outreach in the community. Helping to establish a community archive/repository would be excellent PR, and would be very valuable to the community that they serve.