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| Format: | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| Language: | en |
| Published: |
2009
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ839609 |
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Table of Contents:
- Institutional Repositories: Thinking beyond the Box Albanese, Andrew Richard Access to Information Academic Libraries Archives Electronic Libraries Scholarship Problems In February 2008, the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University made history, unanimously passing a revolutionary open access mandate that, for the first time, would require faculty to give the university copies of their research, along with a nonexclusive license to distribute them electronically. In the press, Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton proudly spoke of reshaping "the landscape of learning" and fixing a damaged, overly expensive system of scholarly communication. And the very fulcrum of Harvard's vision is a library-administered institutional repository (IR). If Harvard's vision portended a major role for IRs in the future, the reality today is that IRs remain largely empty, ineffective, and hobbled by everything from questions over their mission to lagging technology to the lack of meaningful institutional engagement. If they are to succeed as Harvard envisions, the next generation of IRs will require something of a reinvention--and a significantly higher level of institutional commitment. That will be no easy feat, given the current economic collapse, organized publisher resistance, institutional dysfunction, rapidly changing technology, and, most beguiling, the lingering confusion about exactly what IRs are and what they can--and should--do.