Library collaborates on 'DSpace' project

he University is one of six research institutions invited by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libra-ries to assist in further development of DSpace, an electronic system that collects scholarly work and shares it freely with others.

With a $300,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, MIT Libraries will collaborate with the new federation of universities that in addition to Rochester includes Columbia University, Ohio State University, Cornell University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Washington.

"Perhaps most exciting is the potential of DSpace to create and improve partnerships between libraries and those who generate new knowledge on a university or college campus," says Susan Gibbons, director of digital library initiatives for River Campus Libraries.

The digital library repository was launched worldwide in November 2002 to address a growing institutional need: how to collect, preserve, index, and distribute the intellectual output of an organization with complex digital formats.

"This is a time-consuming task for individual faculty and their departments, labs, and centers to manage," says Ann Wolpert, director of MIT Libraries, "and something that the DSpace system will make easier and more affordable."

The system, the result of a two-year collaboration between the MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, is now in full production at MIT and holds approximately 1,000 items.

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