1. DigitalCommons@UConn
Pay to Play:
Jonathan Nabe
University of Connecticut
June 12, 2006
Biomedical and Life Sciences Division, SLA

3. ProQuest’s DigitalCommons
OUR DECISION
LIMITED $ AND STAFFING
HOSTED SOLUTION
LIMITED OPTIONS
ProQuest’s DigitalCommons
One year pilot
Full implementation, 2006

4. WHAT WE LIKED ABOUT DIGITALCOMMONS
HOSTED
LITTLE TECHNICAL DEMANDS ON OUR END
PARTNERSHIP WITH BEPRESS
PROQUEST’S ASSETS AND ECONOMIES OF SCALE

5. SETUP Practically instantaneous
Five minutes and no technological demands since

6. FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, PART 1: FRONT END
Branding
Design and layout
Expandable
Organization

8. FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, PART 2: BACK END
Submission process: Direct vs. Indirect
Metadata fields
Assign documents to multiple series
Help pages within submission process

9. Some Features Accepts all file types Automatic conversion to pdf
OAI-compliant
Thesauri picklists
Retain rights
XML Gateway for federated searching
Peer review and e-journal publishing
Fulltext searching
Access control

10. THE GOOD… IR IN A DAY! (And it works)
Training – by phone, onsite, web conferencing
Web forum – to share experiences & advice
Good support – less than 24 hours for most requests
Enhancements added seamlessly

11. DC ENHANCEMENTS since the beginning of our pilot
Referral use data
RSS Feeds
LDAP Authentication
Personal Researcher Pages
“Claim Your Paper” feature
Supports Handle System
ISI indexing in Science Web Citation Index

13. THE BAD… $$$ for startup Support materials lacking
New features regularly but not on demand
Proprietary programming language

15. AND THE UGLY

16. YOURS OR THEIRS? IS YOUR TECH DEPARTMENT UNDERWORKED?
CAN IT MATCH WHAT PQ PROVIDES?
Daily backups
Weekly off-site backups
Failover server at second ISP?
Quarterly archive FTP’d
Dedicated personnel
Track record of reliability