at the Raman Research Institute

Scholarly Communication in a Digital
World: the Role of the Digital Repository
at the Raman Research Institute



Girija Srinivasan, Y.M. Patil and Jacob Rajan



Raman Research Institute, Bangalore.



International Conference on Semantic Web & Digital
Libraries (ICSD
-
2007), February 21
-
23, 2007,
Bangalore.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

Birth of the RRI Digital
Repository


We have a large collection of newspaper
clippings about Raman dating back to the
1930s.


We have a complete set of all RRI papers in
the pdf format from 1971.


We were keen to make all these documents
accessible not only on our Intranet but also
on the Internet. This way we could also
support the Open
-
Access movement

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

RRI Digital Repository
–

some
milestones

April 2005
–

Test installation of DSpace

July 2005
–

Dedicated server

March 2006
–
The repository was
launched on the internet

Registered with OAISTER and ROAR
soon after.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

Current Configuration of the RRI
Digital Repository

As on 20
th

February 2007

Home URL:
http://dspace.rri.res.in/

IR Software: Dspace Version 1.3.2


Software: CentOS 4.0 Linux,




Apache Tomcat 5.5.9,




Apache Ant 1.6.5,


PostgreSQL 8.0.0,


Sun Java JDK 1.5.0_01


Server: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz, 1GB RAM,


160GB SATA Mirrored Hard disks



ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

Policies & Guidelines


Ours will be an
Omnibus Repository

containing different types of documents.


Any faculty member or student of RRI may
submit/post documents.


But to start with, the project team (which
comprises all the library staff) will add the
documents to the repository after
checking copyright clearance, correct
format & metadata.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

Policies & Guidelines
(contd)


We will provide open access to the full
-
text of
papers (in the permitted format) wherever
possible.


Where this is not possible, we will restrict access
to the full
-
text and make only the bibliographic
details available. If possible, we will also provide
a link to an alternative location, e.g. on a
publisher
’
s site.



In case an open
-
access version is available at
arXiv.org or at any other website, we will give a
link to it in the alternative location.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

Content Development: the
Biggest Challenge


At RRI,

we have used the following
strategies to develop content.


1.
General promotional activities

2.
Mediated depositing services

3.
Content harvesting

4.
Usage information

5.
Self
-
archiving policies


ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

1.
General promotional activities


Personal interaction with several faculty
and members of library committee.


Announcement through email and
notice boards in RRI.


Online information is made available on
the repository homepage.


Periodic emails about the progress
made.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

2. Mediated Deposit


At RRI, almost the entire content has been
added by the project team on behalf of the
authors


First to be added were the newspaper
clippings


Next, papers whose publishers gave
permission to host the published pdfs (Indian
Academy of Sciences, American Physical
Society, American Institute of Physics, IEEE)

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

3. Content Harvesting


Searching for articles which are already
open
-
access in the web and adding them to
the repository e.g.



Authors
’

personal web pages


Publisher
’
s websites


NASA ADS


arXiv.org



Even if we don
’
t have permission to host these
articles on our repository, we have linked to the
above alternative locations.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

4. Usage/citation Information


Statistics are available on our repository
page


We have future plans to implement the
University of Minho statistics add
-
on


for more user
-
friendly statistics






ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

5. Self
-
archiving policies


Many RRI authors have been following
the self
-
archiving tradition established in
the fields of physics and astronomy by
depositing their papers in arXiv.org.


The earliest open
-
access RRI paper in
arXiv.org is dated 1995!

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe

Conclusions


It supports the open access movement and
plays a vital role in the scholarly
communication process;


It collects and preserves all the publications
of the institute in a central place;


It adds one more dimension to the
information services provided by the library.

ICSD
-
2007, Feb 21
-
23, Bangalroe


Thank you!