How to build a repository in ten days (fwd)

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

             ** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2006 16:51:54 +1300
From: Nigel Stanger <nstanger@INFOSCIENCE.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: How to build a repository in ten days

In November 2005 we started a project to implement a pilot open 
access IR using GNU EPrints. We were mightily impressed when we 
were able to go live after just ten days (incidentally becoming 
the first publicly available IR in New Zealand)! If that weren't 
enough, the number of downloads we have been getting is nothing 
short of spectacular (nearly 22,000 from November 17 2005 to 
date).

The technology has matured sufficiently that it's now cheap and 
relatively easy to set up a fully featured repository in quite a 
short time, and we'd like to encourage other institutions who 
have been teetering on the edge of implementation to get on their 
running shoes and go for it. To that end, we've written up our 
story and made it available in our repository. Please come and 
have a look; feedback welcome!

<http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/274/>

Abstract

A fully functional and publicly available, digital institutional 
repository (IR) in the space of just ten days? The technology was 
available, the time was right, the team was right and technical 
assistance from colleagues in Australia was on hand a mere cyber 
call away. This paper reports on how we were able to "hit the 
ground running" in building an open access IR in such a short 
space of time. What has taken our breath away is not so much the 
speed of the process, but the scale of responsiveness from the 
Internet community. Consequently, we also consider the research 
impact of more than 18,000 downloads from eighty countries, less 
than three months into the project!

--
Nigel Stanger,               <http://www.business.otago.ac.nz/infosci/>
Dept. of Information Science,    <http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger>
University of Otago, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.               +64-3-479-8179