Saturday, February 02, 2008

DSpace and institutional repositories

If you aren't a librarian, archivist or pinhead, you won't care, but there's an article in the latest D-Lib magazine on Carrots and Sticks. When I first stumbled into an institutional repository (probably Ohio State's) I began specifically looking for them. As a former cataloger, I would give them a D- in access. Miss Oldfather and Miss Dean would have rapped my knuckles. If it weren't for Google, they'd be worthless. I don't care what they do in Portugal or Pennsylvania to market these to their faculty, staff and students, they are one more black hole of information that needed a good librarian to design and run it, but which looks like it was turned over to the campus IT department instead. They are the 21st century equivalent of the mid-20th century closed stacks, using the Katrina method of shelf arrangement.

1 comment:

Deborah M. said...

Ha! I love it.I was a cataloger too, way back in the day. Have now gone over into the dark side of public service: the reference desk.