New SPARC Innovator Program Recognizes Herbert Van de Sompel

[Alison Buckholtz <alison@arl.org>]

For Immediate Release
April 18, 2006

For more information, contact:
Alison Buckholtz, alison@arl.org

SPARC RECOGNIZES HERBERT VAN DE SOMPEL FOR OUTSTANDING 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION

New SPARC Innovator Program Acknowledges Individuals, Institutions, and
Groups Whose Actions Change the Status Quo

Washington, DC

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) 
has named Herbert Van de Sompel, who leads the Digital Library 
Research and Prototyping Team at the Research Library of the Los 
Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), as the first SPARC Innovator. 
The SPARC Innovator program is a new initiative that recognizes 
an individual, institution, or group that exemplifies SPARC 
principles by working to challenge the status quo in scholarly 
communication for the benefit of researchers, libraries, 
universities, and the public.  SPARC Innovators will be featured 
on the SPARC Web site each month.

Herbert Van de Sompel, the first SPARC Innovator, is the 
initiator of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and the open 
reference linking framework (OpenURL).  The Open Archives 
Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that 
aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content, and it 
has had wide-ranging influence on a variety of other initiatives 
within the open access and institutional repository movements. 
To read more about Van de Sompel, please see the SPARC Innovator 
Web page at <http://www.arl.org/sparc/innovator/>.

"Herbert is one of our leading thinkers on system architecture," 
said Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for 
Networked Information (CNI), who has worked extensively with Van 
de Sompel. "What's striking to me, however, is the extent to 
which his work in this area is driven by his commitment to 
improving information flow and information access within the 
global system of scholarly communication.  This gives his work a 
concreteness and focus, a validation and verification, that's 
very important to its quality and depth."

"Herbert Van de Sompel paired a background in technology with a 
vision of a new infrastructure for information. He brought 
tremendous dedication and perseverance to the task of finding 
support and making the connections necessary to see this vision 
through," said Heather Joseph, SPARC Executive Director.  "He 
used his intellect as well as street smarts to make the Open 
Archives Initiative and OpenURL a reality, and both projects have 
laid the foundation for research and scholarship to become 
available to more people than ever before. Herbert's work on 
global, digital workflow has advanced scholarly communication by 
leaps and bounds, and his commitment to changing the status quo 
makes him a worthy recipient of the SPARC Innovator award."

"I am thrilled to be the first SPARC Innovator, and I appreciate 
the recognition from my peers enormously," Van de Sompel said. 
"The one thing with recognitions like these is they tend to put 
additional pressure on, like people asking what the next big 
thing is you're working on.  I wish I had an answer; I don't 
because one never really knows whether a thing is big until it 
actually is. This recognition will help me to keep focus and 
remain determined."

SPARC Innovators are named by the SPARC staff in consultation 
with the SPARC Steering Committee.  Individuals can nominate 
their colleagues as potential SPARC Innovators at 
<http://www.arl.org/sparc/innovator/>.  Criteria include but are 
not limited to a commitment to:

* Reducing barriers to access, sharing, and use of scholarship,
particularly in the scientific research field;

* Advancing the understanding and implementation of open access to
research results;

* Working to create a balanced scholarly communication system;

* Use of technology to develop alternative publishing and 
communication solutions;

* Refusing to be constrained by the status quo and implementing 
new and creative ideas that are backed by research;

* Vision of the library as a focus for and/or supporter of 
change;

* The belief that individual actions can have a profound and 
positive impact in the scholarly communication field.

A SPARC Innovator can be an individual, a group of people, an 
institution, or another group that has been active in the areas 
listed above.  Their actions may be broadly defined and may 
include online activity (i.e., postings on listservs and Web 
sites); on-campus programs and conferences; writing and editing 
(i.e., articles and books); promoting awareness and activism 
among others; and creating technologies and/or programs. There is 
no monetary award for SPARC Innovators.

For further information, please see the SPARC Web site at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

###


SPARC

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and 
SPARC Europe are an international alliance of more than 300 
academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in 
the scholarly publishing system.  SPARC's advocacy, educational, 
and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded 
dissemination of research. SPARC is located on the Web at 
http://www.arl.org/sparc; SPARC Europe is at 
http://www.sparceurope.org.