Ithaca, NY There will be a one day DSpace User Group Meeting on November 10, 2010 in Baltimore, Maryland, immediately following the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting (http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/10-0513.shtml) on November 8 and 9.

A big thank you to @mire (http://atmire.com/), a Registered DSpace Service Provider, who is sponsoring the DSpace meeting.

As the DSpace Global Outreach Committee plans the user group meeting, we are looking for community feedback on what type of content would be most interesting to include. For anyone who may attend, we’d like to know what you are most interested in hearing about.

Please email me (vhollister@duraspace.org) your feedback on the top content items you would like to see–either based on the list of possible presentations below or add your own ideas for content.

DSpace User Group Meeting Presentation Ideas:

1. Update on DSpace: 1.7 and beyond

2. DSpace Under the Hood: How DSpace works (based on the joint presentation of DSpace Committers and the DSpace Global Outreach Committee at OR10 http://or2010.fecyt.es/Resources/documentos/Duraspace/DSpace%20Under%20the%20Hood_How%20DSpace%20works.pdf)

3. DSpace Under the Hood: The development process and YOUR role in it (based on the joint presentation of DSpace Committers and the DSpace Global Outreach Committee at OR10 http://or2010.fecyt.es/Resources/documentos/Duraspace/DSpace%20Under%20the%20Hood_The%20development%20process%20and%20YOUR%20role%20in%20it.pdf)

4. A Tutorial on the Batch Metadata Editing Tool (based on the presentation by Leonie Hayes at OR10 http://or2010.fecyt.es/Resources/documentos/Duraspace/Batch%20Metadata%20Editing.pdf)

5. Structured discussion on a topic of interest - some examples could include:

• preservation and archiving practices - what Solutions Communities may have to offer
• usage statistics (item downloads, page vists, etc) - establishing standards so info can be exchanged
• your DSpace team - what skills do you need to keep DSpace up and running? how many staff to you need to support your repository?

6. Half day Manakin Training by Eric Luhrs from Lafayette College

7. SWORD Workshop: Adding SWORD to your repository armor (based on the OR10 workshop http://or2010.fecyt.es/Publico/WorkShop/index.aspx#b3)

8. Presentations from the DSpace community about interesting projects - successes or failures of different DSpace use cases (video repositories, dark archives, etc)

9. DSpace Surgery - bring your questions and problems

10. YOUR IDEAS?

Registration is open for the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting that will be held November 8 & 9, 2010 at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/dr10

Ithaca, NY The DuraSpace organization unveiled the open source code for the new DuraCloud platform, a hosted service and open technology that makes it easy for organizations and end users to use cloud services, at the Fifth International Open Repositories Conference (OR10) in Madrid, Spain earlier this month. DuraCloud is an open source platform that is built upon commercial cloud infrastructure. The platform itself deploys into a cloud server environment and is integrated with multiple cloud storage providers, including Amazon AWS and Rackspace. DuraSpace is making the open source code available to enable the community to create new software and services that integrate with the core platform.

Developers who are looking into building applications in the cloud are encouraged to experiment with the DuraCloud code and provide feedback about what you see as development synergies and potential additional features. See the DuraCloud wiki for technical documentation and links to download the code:

https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/duracloud/DuraCloud

The DuraCloud open source platform enables cloud storage across multiple commercial and non-commercial providers and offers a cloud-based services framework focused on preservation support and data access for reuse and sharing. Features include replication, image transformation, bit integrity checking, image viewing, media streaming and general compute processing.

For more information about DuraCloud Open Source please attend the free DuraSpace/ORACLE-sponsored “All About Repositories” web seminar on July 28 at 2:00 pm EDT (tomorrow) presented by Michele Kimpton, CBO DuraSpace. Register here:

http://www.oracle.com/dm/11q1field/51943_duracloud_opensrc_webcst.html.

About DuraCloud

DuraCloud is a hosted service focused on providing preservation support and access tools to academic libraries, academic research centers, and other cultural heritage organizations.

The service builds on pure cloud-based storage available from expert storage providers by overlaying the access functionality and preservation support tools that are essential to ensuring long-term access and durability. DuraCloud offers cloud storage across multiple commercial and non commercial providers, and offers compute services that are key to unlocking the value of digital content stored in the cloud. DuraCloud provides services that enable digital preservation, data access, transformation, and data sharing. DuraCloud is appropriate for individuals, single institutions, or for multiple organizations that want to use cross-institutional infrastructure.

DuraCloud has been in a pilot program phase funded by the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), to utilize and give feedback on the DuraCloud platform since the beginning of Fall 2009. The first three pilot partners identified were New York Public Library, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and WGBH Educational Foundation. These three partners were chosen because they were already managing and preserving large amounts of content in a repository and were facing several challenges where cloud infrastructure could provide a possible solution. The DuraSpace not-for-profit organization will release the DuraCloud service in early 2011.

About DuraSpace

DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments, and more.  DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in the use of open source and cloud-based technologies to serve libraries, universities, research centers, cultural heritage institutions, and other knowledge stewards.  The organization’s open source technology portfolio includes the DSpace open access repository application, the Fedora open repository platform, and the Mulgara semantic database.  DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, an emerging cloud-based service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content.  The DuraSpace team includes recognized leaders and experts in the management of digital information.  The team works with an active and diverse international community committed to the durability of digital resources.

The DuraSpace technology portfolio inherently addresses the issue of durability of digital content.  Our values are expressed in our organizational byline, “open technologies for durable digital content.

http://dar.aucegypt.edu:8080/jspui/handle/10526/52

You may subscribe to the RSS feed from any AUC DAR collection or sub-collection to receive daily e-mail notification of new additions.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2010/07/duncan_announces_creation_of_n.html

The US National Learning Registry is an inter-agency government project designed to make federal learning resources, wherever they are stored, easier to find, access and integrate into learning environments around the country and world. This project will enable teachers, students, parents, schools, governments, corporations and non-profits to build and access better, more interconnected and personalized learning solutions needed for a 21st century education.

Project leaders will be looking for collaborators because they see the Learning Registry initiative as global in scope. Dan Rehak, Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Laboratory Hub Technical Advisor says,”Our hope is to help everyone move forward and what we do for the US Gov’t will fit into a broader international landscape.”

Just because games are no longer in use does not mean that they were not culturally and economically significant at one time. Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois says, “…Games are important. In the United States we’re looking at about 80,000 people who are directly employed by the gaming industry and maybe another 240,000 people involved in related, tangential industries that rely on gaming companies for their existence. So just as a monetary phenomenon, games are important. You probably saw the sales for Modern Warfare? We’re talking a single game that realized over a billion dollars in sales. Sort of shows on a monetary level the importance that games have taken within our economy.”

The Preserving Virtual Worlds project is conducting investigations into how best to archive games. The University of Illinois IDEALS institutional repository based on DSpace is one of the repositories that will be tested to determine how to manage the complex metadata associated with preserving games.

Washington, DC The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Policy, the Census and National Archives announced it will hold a hearing on the issue of public access to federally funded research on Thursday, July 29. The hearing will provide an opportunity for the Committee to hear the perspectives of a broad range of stakeholders on the potential impact of opening up access to the results of the United States’ more than $60 billion annual investment in scientific research.

The Subcommittee’s interest stems from the growing number of visible expressions of interest in the issue of public access that have surfaced in recent months, in both the Legislative and Executive branches of government. Notably, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy earlier this year hosted a Public Access Policy Forum on mechanisms that would leverage federal investments in scientific research and increase access to information.

Additionally, H.R. 5037, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which was introduced into the House on April 15 by Rep. Mike Doyle (R-PA) and is supported by a growing bi-partisan host of cosponsors, was referred to the Committee. The bill, and its identical Senate counterpart (introduced by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX)), proposes to require those eleven federal agencies with extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to implement policies that deliver timely, free, online public access to the published results of the research they fund.

According to the notice:

“The hearing will examine the state of public access to federally-funded research in science, technology, and medicine. The hearing will assess and delineate the complex issues surrounding public access policies. The hearing will afford an opportunity for representatives from the areas of publishing, science and research, education and patient care to provide perspective on challenges, potential impact and opportunities regarding increased access.”

This open, public hearing will be held Thursday, July 29, at 2:00 PM in Rayburn House Office Building, room 2154.

“We are pleased that the Committee is creating this opportunity to shine a light on the issue of public access and examine the opportunities and implications it presents in an open, public forum,” said Heather Joseph, spokesperson for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). “This is an issue of deep importance to a wide range of stakeholders – from scientists to students, entrepreneurs to educators, publishers and the public. We welcome this chance for a diverse array of viewpoints on the issue to be heard.”

The growing interest in exploring effective public access policies in the U.S. reflects a larger worldwide trend. Around the globe, national and non-profit funding agencies are recognizing the opportunity to increase the return on their research grants by requiring that findings be made freely accessible on the Internet.

For more information about the issue of public access to publicly funded research, the Federal Research Public Access Act, and other public access policies, visit http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

About the Alliance for Taxpayer Access

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) is a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

Leuven, Belgium Earlier this month, the CSIC (Spain) published it’s Top 800 Institutional Repository Ranking. That’s right, instead of listing 400 institutions, they now increased this to 800. This is useful and motivating for smaller repositories, to monitor their progress, even if that means jumping from the 500 range to the 400 range.

A short introduction about the Webometrics Repository Ranking initiative:

The aim of the Ranking is to support Open Access initiatives and therefore the free access to scientific publications in an electronic form and to other academic material. The web indicators are used here to measure the global visibility and impact of the scientific repositories.Read a full description of the methodology

This months ranking is strongly shaken up, compared to the January 2010 ranking. Although there is no formal or full explanation, 2 elements could contribute:

- .xls files are no longer counted as full texts (”rich files”).
- Because of “strange results” visibility in the Bing search engine was excluded form the visibility parameter.

Changes in the ranking algorithm always make it very tedious to compare this ranking to previous editions, but as the author, Dr. Isidro F. Aguillo, states:

“Web is still evolving, I think in the future, the web will reflect even better the reality, in the meantime I am fueling the virtuous circle. If the ranking push people to web publish then web indicators become more trusted.”

Thanks to some fine work of Claudia Jürgen in the past, identifying repository platforms for the listed ones, and the work I did on the July 2009 and January 2010 rankings, we compared this new ranking to the old one.

In overall, DSpace’s presence among the top 100 listed repositories is fairly stable, with 41 repositories listed now, compared to 45 in January 2010 and 43 in January 2009.

We’re very proud to see @mire clients, and their repository projects, listed here. Click them for more information on the project.

Here are DSpace repositories for which the rank improved, compared to January 2010:

+4 NA Ohio State University Knowledge Bank
+7 EU University of Helsinki Ethesis
+8 EU Cambridge University Dspace
+12 EU Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lirias Repository
+21 EU Tartu University Library Dspace
+23 EU Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Archivo Abierto Institucional
+24 EU Diposit de la Recerca de Catalunya
+29 NA University of Kansas Scholarworks
+34 CA University of British Columbia CIRCLE
+35 EU Research in Atmosphere, Cryosphere, Hydrosphere and Solid Earth Fields
+49 NA University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Ideals

Unfortunately, there were some Instances who dropped in the ranking:

-119 EU Malmo University Electronic Publishing
-110 AS Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers
-104 AS Ochanomizu University Web Library Institutional Repository
-90 AU Flinders University Academic Commons
-86 EU Universitat Dortmund Eldorado Institutionellen Repositorium
-78 AS Nagasaki University Academic Output
-78 NA SUNY Dspace
-77 NA Rochester Institute of Technology Digital Media Library
-77 EU Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Academic Repository
-69 AS National Tsing Hua University Repository
-66 NA University of Oregon Scholars’ Bank
-66 AS Kanazawa University Repository for Academic Resources
-64 NA University of Rochester Research
-63 AU Australian National University Dspace
-60 EU Aberystwyth University Cadair Repository
-51 NA University of Calgary Dspace
-48 EU Universidade do Minho Repositorium
-44 AU University of Sydney E-Scholarship
-43 NA Cornell University eCommons
-43 NA Boston University Digital Research Archive
-41 EU Leiden University Digital Repository
-41 NA Rice University Scholarship
-38 AS University of Tokyo Repository
-36 NA AMNH Scientific Publications
-35 IBC Biblioteca Digital Jurídica do Superior Tribunal de Justica
-34 AS Waseda University Dspace
-34 NA University of Wisconsin Digital Repository
-32 AS Kyushu University Institutional Repository
-31 NA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Beacon Espace
-30 NA Caltech Authors
-29 AS Indian Statistical Institute Digital Library
-27 NA University of Michigan Deep Blue
-22 EU National Library of Finland Dspace Services
-22 AU University of Adelaide Digital Library
-21 NA Université de Montreal Depot Institutionnel Numerique
-19 NA University of New México Institutional Repository
-18 AS Nagoya University Repository
-15 NA Oregon State University Scholarsarchive
-15 IBC Universidad de los Andes Repositorio Institucional
-15 EU Goteborg University Open Archive
-15 EU University of Bergen Open Research Archive
-15 NA Simon Fraser University Institutional Repository
-11 EU University of Edinburgh Research Archive
-8 EU Igitur Archive Universiteit Utrecht
-8 EU INIST I-Revues
-8 NA Georgia Tech’s Institutional Repository
-7 NA University of Toronto T Space
-5 EU Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya Upcommons
-3 AS Kyoto University Research Information Repository
-2 EU Digital CSIC
-1 NA MIT Dspace

We were able to identify a few institutions who weren’t in the top 100 before, but are now. Unfortunately, we have no exact ranking for these institutions from previous editions. (position - institution name - positions won):

35 EU Université de Liège Open Repository and Bibliography
59 NA ScholarSpace University of Hawai’i at Manoa
73 EU Libre Acces Aux Rapports Scientifiques et Techniques
74 NA University of Texas at Austin Libraries Digital Repository
96 NA Smithsonian Institution Digital Repository

Especially the Université de Liège’s appearance on place 35 is remarkable, as it’s a very high entry for an institution not being in the top 100 before (so it’s at least 65 positions up)

It would be great to hear from the top climbers, if they made certain customizations or improved their repository in a certain way, to explain the improvement in rank. At this point it’s very hard to identify whether the change in the algorithm is fully responsible for the changes, or whether best practices at institutions could explain the changes.

To make a further analysis for your institution, it could be useful to compare the 4 different metrics between July & January:

Size (S). Number of pages recovered from the four largest engines: Google, Yahoo, and Exalead.
Visibility (V). The total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a site can be only confidently obtained from Yahoo Search and Exalead.
Rich Files (R). Only the number of text files in Acrobat format (.pdf) files extracted from Google and Yahoo are considered.
Scholar (Sc). Using Google Scholar database we calculate the mean of the normalised total number of papers and those (recent papers) published between 2001 and 2008.

After the ranking in January 2010, we identified following institutions that kept winning positions, despite the change in algortihms:

(position January 2009 - position July 2009 - position January 2010 - region - repo name)
85 83 38 NA Cornell University eCommons
53 36 17 EU INIST I-Revues
122 82 64 AS Nagasaki University Academic Output
79 49 36 IBC Biblioteca Digital Jurídica do Superior Tribunal de Justica
140 99 87 NA Rice University Scholarship
63 54 43 EU Digital CSIC
135 122 113 EU Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lirias Repository
31 27 26 NA Ohio State University Knowledge Bank

From these, only Ohio State University Knowledge Bank and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lirias Repository kept up with the trend with +4 and +12 positions gained.

To conclude … all DSpace instances that we could identify in the ranking (especially under 200, there are probably a lot more, but we didn’t have the time to verify the full list of 800 repositories).

(Current Ranking - Difference between Jan 2010 and July 2010 - Region - Repository name)

7 -1 NA MIT Dspace
19 -8 EU Igitur Archive Universiteit Utrecht
22 +4 NA Ohio State University Knowledge Bank
25 -8 EU INIST I-Revues
28 -3 AS Kyoto University Research Information Repository
29 -5 EU Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya Upcommons
30 -7 NA University of Toronto T Space
31 -15 NA Oregon State University Scholarsarchive
34 -27 NA University of Michigan Deep Blue
35 EU Université de Liège Open Repository and Bibliography
36 -8 NA Georgia Tech’s Institutional Repository
38 +7 EU University of Helsinki Ethesis
43 +34 CA University of British Columbia CIRCLE
45 -2 EU Digital CSIC
47 -15 IBC Universidad de los Andes Repositorio Institucional
50 -15 EU Goteborg University Open Archive
51 +2 AS National Taiwan University Repository
55 -22 EU National Library of Finland Dspace Services
59 AS ScholarSpace University of Hawai’i at Manoa
61 +24 EU Diposit de la Recerca de Catalunya
62 +29 NA University of Kansas Scholarworks
66 -48 EU Universidade do Minho Repositorium
71 -35 IBC Biblioteca Digital Jurídica do Superior Tribunal de Justica
72 +21 EU Tartu University Library Dspace
73 EU Libre Acces Aux Rapports Scientifiques et Techniques
74 NA University of Texas at Austin Libraries Digital Repository
75 -41 EU Leiden University Digital Repository
76 -32 AS Kyushu University Institutional Repository
78 -30 NA Caltech Authors
81 -43 NA Cornell University eCommons
82 +35 EU Research in Atmosphere, Cryosphere, Hydrosphere and Solid Earth Fields
86 -31 NA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Beacon Espace
88 -34 AS Waseda University Dspace
90 -22 AU University of Adelaide Digital Library
91 -18 AS Nagoya University Repository
93 -15 EU University of Bergen Open Research Archive
94 -15 NA Simon Fraser University Institutional Repository
95 -66 NA University of Oregon Scholars’ Bank
96 NA Smithsonian Institution Digital Repository
98 -38 AS University of Tokyo Repository
99 +49 NA University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Ideals
101 +12 EU Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lirias Repository
113 EU Universidad de Alicante Repositorio Institucional
115 -63 AU Australian National University Dspace
117 -21 NA Université de Montreal Depot Institutionnel Numerique
118 -44 AU University of Sydney E-Scholarship
124 NA Texas A&M University Digital Repository
125 -66 AS Kanazawa University Repository for Academic Resources
128 -41 NA Rice University Scholarship
131 -11 EU University of Edinburgh Research Archive
132 +8 EU Cambridge University Dspace
137 AU University of Technology Sydney Press Institutional Repository
138 -19 NA University of New México Institutional Repository
139 -34 NA University of Wisconsin Digital Repository
142 -78 AS Nagasaki University Academic Output
147 SA Repositorio de la Escuela Superior Politécnica del Ecuador
148 -78 NA SUNY Dspace
149 -69 AS National Tsing Hua University Repository
153 +23 EU Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Archivo Abierto Institucional
155 NA University of Delaware Library Institutional Repository
159 NA University of Manitoba Mspace
162 -36 NA AMNH Scientific Publications
163 -77 NA Rochester Institute of Technology Digital Media Library
167 -104 AS Ochanomizu University Web Library Institutional Repository
167 EU Università di Trieste Openstarts
169 -51 NA University of Calgary Dspace
170 -43 NA Boston University Digital Research Archive
175 NA New York University Faculty Digital Archive
178 AS Indian Institute of Astrophysics Dspace
181 AS Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Institutional Repository
189 EU Cranfield University CERES
192 AS National Chengchi University Repository
193 EU Jyväskylä University Digital Archive
194 NA University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy
196 -29 AS Indian Statistical Institute Digital Library
197 EU University of Helsinki HELDA
207 AS Griffith University Research Online
209 -110 AS Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers
212 IBC Universidad de Chile Repositorio Académico
215 NA University of Washington Researchworks
216 AS Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Repository
218 AS University of Hong Kong Scholars Hub
219 AS Tokyo Gakugei University Repository System
223 NA Kansas State University Research Exchange
226 NA National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education Repository
234 NA Indiana University Scholarworks
236 NA Open Access Server of the Woods Hole Scientific Community
239 -64 NA University of Rochester Research
240 EU University of Leicester Research Archive
245 AF Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Space
247 EU Brunel University Research Archive
249 IBC Universidade Federal do Parana Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações
250 EU Trinity College University of Dublin Research Archive
251 -77 EU Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Academic Repository
253 EU European University Institute Institutional Repository
256 -86 EU Universitat Dortmund Eldorado Institutionellen Repositorium
257 -60 EU Aberystwyth University Cadair Repository
259 NA Queen’s University Qspace
261 -90 AU Flinders University Academic Commons
264 AU University of Canterbury Research Repository
269 AS Kumamoto University Repository
271 AS Mie University Scholarly E-Collections
274 -119 EU Malmo University Electronic Publishing
277 AS Yokohama National University Repository
279 NA Youngstown State University Repository
284 AS National Institute of Oceanography India Digital Repository
285 EU School of Advanced Study University of London Space E-Repository
287 AU Australian Defence Science and Technology Organization Repository
305 NA Drexel University e-Repository and Archive
315 EU Universita degli Studi di Milano Institutional Archive of Research
326 AS Kagoshima University Repository
329 NA Indiana and Purdue University Indianapolis Digital Archive
338 EU Loughborough University Institutional Repository
347 AS Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Academic Repository
353 EU Roskilde University Digital Archive
365 NA University of Waterloo UWSpace
369 EU Universita degli Studi della Tuscia Dspace
376 AS Xiamen University Institutional Repository
390 EU University College of Boras Academic Digital Archive
414 EU University of Hertfordshire Research Archive
418 EU Universitat Kassel Dspace
418 EU Open University Netherlands Dspace
441 EU University of Bristol Repository of Scholarly ePrints
446 NA George Mason University Archival Repository Service
461 EU University of Macedonia Digital Library & Institutional Repository
482 AS Raman Research Institute Digital Repository
516 AS Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Prometheus Academic Collections
641 EU Technical University Ostrava Repository
729 AU University of Auckland Researchspace
765 EU Halmstad University Scholarly Archive

If you think we made a mistake, or if you want to discuss this ranking, please contact Bram Luyten at or add your comments to this blog. This could be interesting.

DSpace with “Fedora Inside” would be a version of the DSpace application which can store its contents (files and/or metadata) in Fedora. The goal is to retain the out-of-the-box experience that is DSpace, while also enabling the extra features that Fedora provides (e.g. versioning, relationships between objects, flexible architecture).

DuraSpace is looking for volunteers to help make this concept a reality. This work will happen in stages, over several releases of both DSpace and Fedora software. DuraSpace has already volunteering some staff time to help with this initiative.

More information about this “Fedora Inside” concept and how it could be implemented in DSpace is available in the DSpace & Fedora Integration FAQ.

DuraCloud is a hosted service and open technology developed by DuraSpace that makes it easy for organizations and end users to use cloud services. DuraCloud leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content.

This OR10 Birds of a Feather session will provide an overview of the architecture, a demo of the service, and most importantly a discussion of usage patterns and integration approaches for institutional repositories.

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois The BibApp development team is happy and proud to announce the 1.0 release of BibApp!

BibApp is a campus research gateway and expert finder. It matches researchers on your campus or research center with their publication data and mines that data to see collaborations, create visualizations of areas of research, and find experts in research areas. With BibApp, it is easy to see what publications can be placed on the Web for greater access and impact. BibApp can push those publications directly into an institutional repository.

BibApp allows researchers and research groups to promote research, find collaborators on campus, and make research more accessible. It also allows libraries to better understand research happening in local departments, facilitate conversations about author rights with researchers, and ease the population of the institutional repository. Finally, BibApp allows campus administrators to achieve a clearer picture of collaboration and scholarly publishing trends on campus.

BibApp is the result of a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Illinois Informatics Institute at the University of Illinois (https://www.informatics.illinois.edu/icubed/) provided generous funding for the development of the 1.0 release of BibApp.

BibApp is a Ruby on Rails application, coupled with the Solr/Lucene search engine, and either MySQL or PostgreSQL as its datastore. It uses open standards and protocols such as OpenURL and SWORD and automatically pulls in data from third party sources such as Google Books and the Sherpa/Romeo publisher policy database. BibApp imports publication data in RIS, MEDLINE and Refworks XML bibliography formats and exports data in several citation formats (APA, Chicago, IEEE, MLA, more) via CiteProc. BibApp also provides a web services API for delivering data as XML, YML, JSON, and RDF. BibApp is released under a University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php).

Live installations of BibApp can be found at:

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign –
http://connections.ideals.illinois.edu
The MBLWHOI Library at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution –
http://bibapp.mbl.edu/
The University of Kansas Medical Center — http://experts.kumc.edu/

Next steps for the project include a 1.1 release that will include internationalization and a richer authentication/authorization system.
The team is also in the process of expanding the development community around BibApp.

For software downloads, contact information, and more information about BibApp, please visit http://www.bibapp.org/, and also follow on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bibapp.

Ithaca, NY  Today, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization announced its new Registered Service Provider Program to establish partnerships with companies that provide support services to institutions using the DSpace and Fedora digital repository software.

The new program will establish an network of service providers offering a range of services including customer support, technical consulting, software development, and systems integration.   The program will benefit universities, libraries, museums, research institutions, and others that require support in building or maintaining repository-based systems built with DSpace, Fedora, and related open source and commercial technologies.

Registered Service Providers will be easily identified.   They will be featured on the DuraSpace web site (duraspace.org) and relevant project websites, with contact information and a profile of their service offerings.   Providers will also exhibit their affiliation with DuraSpace by displaying the special DuraSpace Service Provider Logo on their marketing materials and websites.

Registered Service Providers share the DuraSpace commitment to ensuring that current and future generations have access to our collective digital heritage. Service Providers are active participants in open source software communities and are committed to providing expertise and technical consulting to enable customers to achieve their goals with open technologies.

The program will launch with five initial Registered Service Providers: Atmire (i.e., @mire), CILEA, DiscoveryGarden, Enovation, Media Shelf and Wijiti.  DuraSpace invites other companies providing services supporting digital repositories and cloud-based solutions to join.

DiscoveryGarden CEO Mark Leggott says, “DiscoveryGarden is excited to be among the first companies working with the DuraSpace community as a member of the Registered Service Provider Program. The DuraSpace family of open source software provides an unparalleled foundation for building a healthy repository ecosystem that can help steward digital assets in any landscape. This new program is an excellent example of how we can both benefit from and contribute to building a vibrant and sustainable DuraSpace community.”

DiscoveryGarden provides consulting and software-as-service based around the Islandora open source solution stack.  Islandora integrates two best-practice open source software solutions (Drupal and Fedora repositories) to create unique systems for digital asset management and enterprise content management.

Lieven Droogmans, CEO of Atmire (@mire) says, “@mire is proud to be one of the first Registered Service Providers in the DuraSpace program. Through this financial and technical commitment, our company seeks to further extend its relationship with the community and to contribute to the continuity and success of DSpace around the world. DSpace is the key component in most of @mire’s projects and lies at the core of @mire’s activities. Each member of our technical staff is fully devoted to DSpace customization and development.”

Atmire (@mire) is a company that has a wide offering for institutions running DSpace repositories including installation, customization, add-on modules, training and support services.

For more information about Registered Service Providers, or to join the DuraSpace Registered Service Providers Program, contact Michele Kimpton at mkimpton@DuraSpace.org.

ABOUT DURASPACE

DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments, and more.  DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in the use of open source and cloud-based technologies to serve libraries, universities, research centers, cultural heritage institutions, and other knowledge stewards.  The organization’s open source technology portfolio includes the DSpace open access repository application, the Fedora open repository platform, and the Mulgara semantic database.  DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, an emerging cloud-based service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content.  The DuraSpace team includes recognized leaders and experts in the management of digital information.  The team works with an active and diverse international community committed to the durability of digital resources.

The DuraSpace technology portfolio inherently addresses the issue of durability of digital content.  Our values are expressed in our organizational byline, “open technologies for durable digital content.”

Lincoln, Nebraska centerNet, an international network of digital humanities centers with over 200 members worldwide, today announced the launch of a beta web site. This is a work in progress, and comments and suggestions are appreciated.

http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet_new

We hope to add some new features in time, including a “members section” with more information about each of the centers. BTW, descriptions that now appear were contributed by centers and organizations themselves, and in some cases may need to be amended.  If your description is one of these, please send us revised text.

The DuraCloud open source platform enables cloud storage across multiple commercial and non-commercial providers and is also a cloud storage/compute application focused on preservation support and data access for reuse and sharing. Features include replication, image transformation, bit integrity checking, image viewing, media streaming and general computer services. Learn more about DuraCloud here: http://duracloud.org.

The DSpace Global Outreach Committee is updating the “Who’s Using DSpace” Registry, the most popular page on the DSpace website. Our goal is to keep everyone’s repository information updated to help facilitate connections between users and to foster collaborations in the future.

Please take a minute to review your current registry information in “Who’s Using DSpace”. If you have recently upgraded to a recent DSpace version or would like add other information upgrade an existing registry here. If you are not able to find your repository in “Who’s Using DSpace”, register here.

The “Who’s Using DSpace” is a great way to strengthen DSpace community networking.  Members of the DSpace community can now search the database to discover other institutions which have similar repositories, environments or interests to their own.  Members can see, for example, who is using which version of DSpace, what kind of customizations they’ve done, and what kind of content they store.  Users can use a faceted browse to find institutions that meet specific criteria and perform open text searches on the entire registry.

Remember, it may take up to a week for your changes to appear in “Who’s Using DSpace”. We hope to have as many repositories updated as possible for the Open Repositories 2010 conference in Spain.

URLs

“Who’s Using DSpace” registry: http://www.dspace.org/whos-using-dspace/Repository-List.html

Register your repository:  http://www.dspace.org/component/option,com_facileforms/Itemid,151/ff_name,dspaceinstance/lang,en/

Update an existing registry: http://www.dspace.org/component/option,com_facileforms/Itemid,154/

Thank you for your continued support!

 Most sincerely,

DSpace Global Outreach Committee

C&T 2011 welcomes participation from researchers, designers, educators, industry, and students from the many disciplines and perspectives bearing on the interaction between community and technology, including architecture, arts, business, design, economics, education, engineering, ergonomics, information technology, geography, health, humanities, law, media and communication studies, and social sciences. The conference program will include competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as pre-conference workshops, a doctoral consortium, and invited keynote and panel speakers
.
We look forward to welcoming you to an exciting conference in Brisbane, Australia’s new world city.
–Marcus Foth, Conference Chair

IMPORTANT DATES

10 December 2010: Full papers and workshop proposals due
24 January 2011: Review reports due
18 February 2011: Notification of acceptances sent to authors
4 March 2011: Camera ready papers due
30 April 2011: Workshop papers, Doctoral Consortium and Student
Volunteer applications due
29 June 2011: Pre-conference workshops and Doctoral Consortium
30 June – 2 July 2011: C&T 2011 conference at QUT, Brisbane, Australia

CONFERENCE TOPICS

C&T 2011 welcomes contributions in all areas of community and technology research, design and development. In addition, we particularly invite authors to address any of the following topics:

Augmented Reality
Civic Intelligence
Context and Location Awareness
Community-centered Design and Evaluation Methodologies
Community Engagement
E-research with Communities
E-government and E-governance
Participation
Smart Community Services
Sustainability
Universal Usability and Accessibility
Urban Informatics
Tangible Interfaces for Community Interaction
Technologies of Scale Making
Visualisation Techniques
Working across Cultures

PAPER SUBMISSIONS

All submissions must be written in English. Papers must be no longer than 10 pages, including all additional material such as references, appendices, and figures. Please format papers using the ACM SIGCHI two column layout available at http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform. Full papers must include a title, sufficient space for the author name(s) to appear on the paper, contact information and affiliations, abstract, keywords, body, and references.

Papers submitted by the due date will undergo a double blind peer review process by an international panel and evaluated on the basis of their significance, innovation, academic rigour, and clarity of writing. Accepted papers will be included in the published conference proceedings if at least one author of any accepted submission has registered and attends the conference. Papers are submitted via an online submission system that will be opened in September 2010.

Please send any questions to Jesper Kjeldskov, Technical Program Chair: jesper AT cs.aau.dk

WORKSHOP PROPOSALS

Workshops are half day or full day sessions prior to the main conference program on 29 June 2011. Workshop proposals (max of 2 pages, using the ACM SIGCHI two column layout available at http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform) should be aimed at a community with a common interest. If you are working in an emerging area of Communities and Technologies, consider organising a workshop as an opportunity to advance the field and build momentum. C&T workshops might address basic or applied research and practice, new methodologies, emerging application areas, design innovations, management and organizational issues, or education. Each workshop should generate ideas that give the C&T community a new, organized way of thinking about the topic, or ideas that suggest promising directions for future research. Some workshops result in edited books or special issues of journals; you may consider including this goal in your workshop proposal.

Please send proposals to Jaz Choi, Workshop Chair: h.choi AT qut.edu.au

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

The Doctoral Consortium is scheduled prior to the main conference program on 29 June 2011. The Doctoral Consortium offers research students a special forum where they can present, discuss and progress their research plans with peers and established senior researchers. Research students wishing to attend the consortium should submit 4 pages, using the ACM SIGCHI two column layout available at http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform, addressing 4 headings: Aims and Background; Significance and Innovation; Methodology; Questions and Issues (that is, identify those areas you seek feedback on). Places at the consortium will be offered based on a review of the submitted proposals.

Please send applications to Christine Satchell, Doctoral Consortium Chair: christine.satchell AT qut.edu.au

VOLUNTEERS

C&T actively encourages students to volunteer at the conference. Being a student volunteer is a great way to support the research community, meet other students in the field, and attend an international ACM conference. You will help the conference organisers with the running of the conference and support the setting-up of presentations and workshops. You will see the latest in C&T research and development, and have fun while learning about running the conference. In return, you will get free registration.

To apply, email us your contact details (email, phone, university), an abstract of your research project, a CV, and the reasons why you would like to be a student volunteer. Applications close on 30 April 2011.
Please send applications to Ronald Schroeter, Volunteers Chair: r.schroeter AT qut.edu.au

Have you heard about SWORD (http://www.swordapp.org/) but are unsure of why or how you should use it?

Members of the SWORD team will be running a free hands-on workshop at OR2010 that will provide an introduction to SWORD, some examples of how it can be used, and if you have a laptop you can try out some SWORD clients and have a go at making your own using an online SWORD client creation toolkit.

By the end of the workshop you’ll understand what SWORD is, how and where you should use it, and the new potential deposit avenues that it could open up for your repository.

Full details are at:

- http://or2010.fecyt.es/Publico/WorkShop/index.aspx#b3

It will run from 2:15 until 4:30 on Friday 9th July. It is aimed at both technical and non-technical members of staff.

Please send an email to swordapp@gmail.com to book a place on the workshop.

Enjoying two successful years, the Repository Fringe Festival is back for the third time… and this year we have moved the event to the end of the Edinburgh Festival, and to the National eScience Centre. Registration is now open here:

http://www.repositoryfringe.org/

Always innovative, and always looking forward, this year we are looking at the OPEN: Open Data; Open Access; Open Learning; Open Knowledge; Open Content; etc…

The programme for the event is, as ever, created by the participants, however there will be a focus on group discussion rather than long talks.

Pecha Kucha will make an appearance again, as will the round-table discussions… and we will be hosting a Great Debate on the Thursday Evening (with wine & nibbles.)

We are looking for submissions from managers, librarians, coders, educators & blue-sky thinkers; we are looking for Pecha Kucha talks & round-table discussion ideas…. and one of them we’ll take on for the Great Debate. Contact information for queries may be found here: http://eris.lib.ed.ac.uk/repofringe/?page_id=44.

We are also delighted to be able to offer space on Wednesday September 1 for anyone who wishes to host a meeting or workshop at that time.

Repostitory Fringe 2010 tag: #rfringe10

San Francisco, CA Oracle is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the Open Repositories conference July 6-9 in Madrid. If you are attending the conference, make sure to register for Oracle’s PASIG event taking place July 5th. For more information on the conference, visit the OR website.

The Oracle Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) has an information-packed day planned focused on open computing solutions and best practices in the digital preservation, repository, and archiving space. The meeting will address topics of mutual co-operation in the areas of Repositories, Digital Libraries, Data Curation, Management of eScience content, and Long-Term Preservation.

Experts from Stanford University, Oxford University, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family Search, the DuraSpace organization, Oracle, and other global institutions and organizations will discuss their projects and new technologies, including open storage, sustainable preservation architectures, and new reference architectures.

Agenda items will include:

• Global trends review and the Oracle PASIG focus
• Projects, goals, use cases, and issue areas presented by leading institutions, businesses, and organizations
• Oracle technology overview and reference architecture
• Breakout sessions discussing partner solutions, Oracle content management and archiving solutions

About PASIG

Oracle’s PASIG community provides support for organizations and companies challenged with preserving and archiving important research, web content, digital media assets, and cultural heritage materials. The organization was founded in 2007 with the cooperation of the U. of Alberta, the British Library, the French national Library, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and other leading global libraries and universities. This PASIG is directed at fostering global collaboration across different themes, disciplines, and industries. Ideas and input from this conference will be incorporated into both the Fall semi-annual global PASIG event and Oracle solution directions.

For additional agenda information please contact Art Pasquinelli. For other meeting questions, please contact Arianne Hardt.

Boston, MA BioMed Central (BMC), an international publisher of journals in science, technology, and medicine and a pioneer in open-access publishing, named Harvard University one of the world’s three open-access institutions of the year. BioMed Central announced the honor at its fourth annual research awards ceremony in London on June 9.

The annual award recognizes institutions that have done the most to show leadership in taking steps to expand access to the published results of scholarly research. This year, to reflect the global spread of open-access initiatives, BMC chose to honor Harvard together with the University of Zurich and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The award to Harvard recognizes the breadth and significance of Harvard’s open-access policies: “The open-access mandate introduced by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has been extremely influential, encouraging and emboldening other US institutions including MIT, Kansas and Duke University to take similar action. In addition, a furthehulr four schools at Harvard have since gone on to introduce their own mandates. (Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government).”

In addition, BioMed Central lauds the University as “it emphasizes the need to find sustainable alternatives to subscriptions in order cover the costs associated with peer-reviewed publication, while avoiding the need to restrict access.”

Stuart M. Shieber, author of the FAS open-access policy and director of the Office for Scholarly Communication, describes the award as both gratifying and significant. “In global terms, Harvard has a leadership role in open access,” notes Shieber, who is also Harvard’s James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “Like our colleagues at Zurich and at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we have accomplished a great deal, but must continue to work on many fronts: support for open-access journals, difficult issues in monograph and book publishing in the humanities, access to scientific data, tools for supporting open access, new kinds of scholarly output such as databases and software.”

Following the unanimous FAS vote for open access in 2008, Provost Steven E. Hyman charged the University Library to create the Office for Scholarly Communication as an integral part of Harvard’s central library services.

“In recognizing Harvard as one of three globally significant open-access institutes,” states Helen Shenton, Deputy Director of the Harvard University Library, “BioMed Central celebrates the leadership and support of Harvard’s faculty, while affirming the value of the University’s investments in scholarly communication. The award also underscores the growing role of the Harvard Libraries in gathering, curating, and delivering up-to-date research online through our growing open-access repository.”

• As Lives are Documented Digitally: Strategies for Cultural Memory Organizations, by CNI director Clifford Lynch
• DuraCloud: Preservation Infrastructure in the Cloud, by Andrew Woods, DuraSpace

More videos from CNI’s April membership meeting will be announced soon. Subscribe to either channel feed to receive automatic updates when new material is available.