ePrints The Glasgow Experience William J Nixon Glasgow University Library 27 February 2002

The Open Archives Initiative OAI develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.

OAI’s Roots Its roots lie in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication.. But… it now recognises a broader remit for opening up access to a range of digital materials.

OAI Protocol “Low barrier intraoperability framework” Metadata: 15 elements of Dublin Core OAI Protocol 1.1 OAI version 2.0 will be released in May 2002

A Tale of Two Providers Data Providers support the OAI protocol as a means of exposing metadata about their content. Service Providers issue OAI protocol requests to data providers and use the metadata as a basis for building value-added services.

ARC Cross Archive Searching Service

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Wider World JISC FAIR Programme “inspired by the vision of the Open Archives Initiative” Mellon funding of $1.5M for seven projects in the United States

Eprints.org Developed at the Electronics and Computer Science Department of the University of Southampton. ePrints version 2.0 now launched We are currently running eprints.org was previously supported by CogPrints, funded by JISC as part of its Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme.

The Catalyst of Crisis Crisis in Scholarly Communication Alternative Publishing Models and the push for self-archiving Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)

Create Change Website

OAI at Glasgow The overarching aim of the development of ePrints at the University of Glasgow is to provide an effective [further] means of ensuring the disclosure of, and access to the scholarly work and research of this institution.

Complementary Resource The University of Glasgow ePrints repository will exist, not in competition with the subject based archives, which are already established but rather as a complementary Institutional resource.

Goals at Glasgow: Disclosure and access Disclose Glasgow scholarship –Pre-prints & re-prints (formal) –grey literature (reports, conference papers?) –possibly theses and books… Originally… make RAE submission papers available Contribute to liberation of scholarship Raise Glasgow profile

Non-goal! Solving the long term digital preservation problem for this material!

Other goals Compatible with world-wide OAI infrastructure Material if possible hospitable to both display and future preservation activity

Getting the mix right Support, endorsement and vitally, the content of our academic colleagues / partners Resources [staff and equipment] to ensure that it is developed, marketed and launched

Implementation Set-up and Installation Configuration Administration Marketing / Promotion

Set-up and Installation Installed 3 versions: –Beta - March –1.0 - April – November 2001 Installed and hosted by Computing Services Staff Configuration by Library Staff

Set-up Skill sets: –Apache –Perl –Unix / Red Hat Linux –MySQL Pilot service

Configuration Initially much trial and error “MERLIN” Look and Feel Various Document Formats Subject Listing - Library of Congress Browse by Faculties option OAI Registration

Glasgow May 2001

ePrints Demonstrator November 2001

Document Formats Those unsuitable for long term –Word We added RTF –HTML unless carefully checked HTML output from Word unsatisfactory Better formats? –PDF- added –XML?

Individual Record

Library of Congress Established Subject Scheme Used in our Library catalogue Top Level Headings –Sub-headings for local subjects as appropriate e.g. Computing Science

Browse by Subject May 2001

Browse by Subject November 2001

Browse by Faculties Provides an opportunity to pull papers together by Department Uses pre-configured searches which run under Advanced Search Run from “static” page which is updated manually

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OAI Registration Not registered out of the box Compliance Testing Robustness Testing Had to register with individual service providers e.g. ARC

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Desirable Features Intranet link (single Username / Password) ability to change password! User file over-write option Audit trail Display document status Display of multiple authors (Format)

Administration Submission process Administration

Marketing / Promotion "If you build it, they will come” - “Field of Dreams” Or Not, as initial experience suggests...

Policy implications Copyright Intellectual Policy Rights Collection Policies Who can submit papers? Long term archiving Quality control

Initial User Feedback Positive Online help quite good Additional fields and document types –Lecture Paper –Meeting Reports / Project Reports –Language –ISBN/ISSN

Who benefits? Operational matters Document formats and Copyright Collection policy Quality control External liaison Academic Concerns

Addressing Academic concerns: Giving guarantees that this will not affect the publication process Making the process as simple as possible Being clear why academics will benefit Clarifying the University's position on ownership of copyright

The Future Launch of ePrints - 9th April Upgrade to ePrints Version 2.0 Network of OAI Services for different content –Pre-prints –Published papers –e-Theses

Implementing ePrints Implementing ePrints is a no longer a luxury to simply be dreamed about... It is a new challenge for Libraries to embrace