SPARC Digital Repository MeetingKicks Off Discussion ofa "Disruptive" Future that Remains Largely Untapped

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 11/18/2008

While there have been significant developments in the world of digital repositories over the past four years, their groundbreaking potential remains largely untapped, and their current mission, in the academic enterprise, in libraries, and in publishing and scholarly communication, remains a complex, somewhat vexing issue. That was the takeaway from the opening session of the two-day SPARC 2008 Digital Repositories Meeting, in Baltimore this week. Some 330 librarians, technologists, administrators, publishers, and vendors gathered, up from 260 attendees who attended the inaugural meeting in 2004.

What’s changed for the better since 2004? In her opening remarks, SPARC executive director Heather Joseph noted that repositories have surged in recent years, now numbering over 1200 in nearly 70 countries. Libraries, as well as academic departments, government agencies, and individuals, create these repositories. The policy environment has also undergone a marked transformation, Joseph said, noting that the open access policy of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences made its still-evolving repository a centerpiece of its plan, and that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has mandated its investigators to deposit research funded by the agency in PubMed Central.

The vision
Against this background, a rapt, full-capacity audience listened to keynote speaker John Wilbanks, who runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons, detail the long view of what repositories one day might offer, as well the challenges they face today: from staffing and labor, copyright law, culture, and technology. 

Wilbanks referred to repositories as disruptive by nature, and noted that "disruptive processes can't be planned," a truth at odds with "stable systems," like universities and publishers, which are fundmentally resistant to change. Still, such stable systems are vital for the repository world, Wilbanks noted, and their funding and commitment is needed. Wilbanks suggeted the "namespaces" of the emerging digital environment were "shaky" at best. "Who knows where Science Commons will be in 50 years," he said. "Universities will still be around." 

Wilbanks sketched the broad strokes of digital repository-enabled world where data is freed of its containers, a "semantic web" that can one day turn a "corpus of queries into links," and where raw data is free to be used and re-used in ways not originally imagined, to foster new innovations, as opposed to being locked down by copyright, restrictive licenses, or thwarted by conflicting policies. 

"Nothing," Wilbanks said flatly, "replaces hacking" when it comes to innovation, citing as an example researchers who adapted Google Maps to show brain activity. Among the major obstacles for repositories, in a word: tenure. 

Wilbanks showed a cartoon to illustrate his point, showing a faculty member in his provost's office facing two doors, one marked "tenure," the other marked "flipping burgers at McDonald's." The key, he suggested, is showing faculty how this brave new world can benefit their careers and keep them "out of McDonald's." He also noted a host of attendant issues: including funding, and staffing issues. "Powerful systems need people to run them," he said, urging conference-goers to support and invest in their repositories.

Faculty the key
Winning faculty to the powerful future offered by digital repositories, especially those who may not see what digital repositories can do for them presently, is perhaps the conference's major theme. To that end, Wilbanks urged experimentation. He also urged the development of new services and metrics for success. Such metrics would go beyond citations to things like trackbacks, which can trace just how embedded one's data, not just one's paper, for example, becomes. 

The audience listened attentively to Wilbanks' exciting vision, one that evoked the true potential of the web versus the status quo of imposing old, analog regimes and values. Jim Neal, Columbia's University Librarian, asked Wilbanks a final question that perfectly framed the uneasiness that dominates the emerging repository landscape: how do we cut through the "pollution of repositories"?

Given that repositories can be personal, institutional, government-mandated, publishers', and discipline-based, how do we guarantee the "intregrity and sustainability?" Neal wondered. There was no answer. Addressing such questions, however, was clearly at the heart of the meeting.

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