UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DARTEurope background progress and plans

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DART-Europe: background, progress and plans Martin Moyle Digital Curation Manager UCL Library Services, UK e-mail: m. moyle@ucl. ac. uk DART-Europe - DRIVER meeting, Pisa, 22 -23 October 2007

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Presentation outline q Origins q Key characteristics q Phase one: aims and achievements q Current and prospective members q Key external relationships q Current themes q DART-Europe E-theses Portal – current state, future plans q DART-Europe and e. Content+

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DART-Europe: origins q Founded in 2005 q Founding academic partners: q UCL, UK q Dartington College of Arts, UK q Oxford University, UK q Trinity College Dublin, Ireland q In association with Pro. Quest (technology partner) q Overall objective: to explore the creation of a European model for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment q Sought to align with national e-theses developments in member countries, where possible

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DART-Europe: key characteristics q No partner subscriptions; no external funding q All work is resourced through partner contributions in kind q Incremental progress; realistic expectations q Founded on personal relationships q Partners are enthusiastic about e-theses and show long-term commitment to the programme

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DART-Europe - initial aims q Phase one planned as a 18 -month project. Aims: q Creation of an Open Access e-theses Portal q Creation of a hosted repository service q Provision of advice and guidance on e-theses, including IPR, formats. . . q Implementation of a demonstrator digital preservation service for European e-theses q Identification of a business model for sustainability, founded on value-added services q such as sale of bound copies, copyright checking, metadata enrichment, digital preservation services, etc

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DART-Europe phase one: successes and. . . q A demonstrator Portal was built (more later) q Hosted repository service was tested by Trinity; remains available through Pro. Quest q Systematic work on advice and guidance was deferred: resources; also other bodies (eg GUIDE, ETHOS) emerged with similar remits q Digital Preservation service was not tested q A business model to support the sustainability of an Open Access Portal was not identified q DART-Europe's second phase began 2007 q DART as a fully community-led partnership

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Current members q CBUC (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya), Spain* q University of Debrecen University and National Library, Hungary* q Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Germany* q Di. VA (Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkive), Sweden and Norway* q Dublin City University, Ireland *denotes contributor to Portal q Helsinki University of Technology, Finland* q University of Nottingham, UK* q Oxford University, UK q Trinity College Dublin, Ireland* q UCL (University College London), UK*

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Prospective members q Commitments to DART-Europe from: q ABES consortium, France q PLEIADI, Italy q Lund University, Sweden q University of Tartu / ELNET consortium, Estonia q Discussion also in progress with: q Spain (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Dialnet consortium) q Switzerland, via National Library q Denmark, via National Library q Belgium (Flemish- and French-speaking Universities) q Institut Ruder Boskovic, Croatia q University of Warsaw, Poland

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Key external relationships q LIBER q DART-Europe is endorsed by LIBER as part of the work of the LIBER Access Division q GUIDE has agreed to merge into DART-Europe, subject to approval of respective Boards q NDLTD q DART-Europe will serve as NDLTD Working Group for Europe q Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), Netherlands q The KB is working with DART-Europe on the digital preservation of e-theses

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DART-Europe phase two: 9 key themes q q q q q External relations and partnership expansion Dissemination and marketing Portal development Advocacy Training Legal issues Digital preservation Retrospective digitisation Sustainability / business model q More detailed work programmes will be put together early in 2008

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES The DART-Europe E-theses Portal (DEEP) See http: //www. dart-europe. eu

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DEEP - where DART-Europe is now q > 20 data providers, doctoral theses only q > 70, 000 records, daily updates q Off-the-shelf harvester (PKP) q Basic search and browse services q Simple DC-based q focus on entry points: author, title, date, abstract q filter by language, institution/consortium q basic sorting of results (title, date, author) q hyperlinks to local splash pages for rich metadata q Some data clean-up goes on in the background, eg dates q Otherwise, GIGO q A pragmatic solution: focus on the essentials. q Is succeeding in delivering no-frills OA to e-theses.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DEEP plans: technical - short term q Tighter metadata standardisation q A Simple DC-based format to ensure consistency q e. g. "date" will reliably hold date of award q e. g. only URN/URLs in Identifier q But Portal will continue to support oai_dc q Ongoing interface customisation (cosmetic) q Search/browse by country ü Can be achieved with existing resources

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DEEP plans: technical - medium term q Move to a bespoke interface q retain existing harvester but implement new GUI on top q will allow more flexibility in service development, conformity with accessibility standards, etc. q Agree and support a more expansive metadata format q European? International? To be explored with NDLTD q will permit richer discovery services; better support for compound theses q Translations of the interface into partner languages q Basic end-user services, eg RSS alerts ü Can be achieved with existing resources. . . but will take time.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DEEP plans: technical - longer term q Multilingual search and retrieval q no new development work - implement Eurovoc, or the NEEO tool? q but will still be resource-intensive q Improved end-user functionality q search history, personalisation, saved searches, download in bibliographic markup formats. . . q Support for structured browsing through automatic derivation of subject descriptors q No shared subject vocabulary; would unrealistic to impose a sufficiently detailed taxonomy on contributors Ø Unlikely to be achievable with existing resources

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES DEEP plans: policy considerations q What do consumers really want from a European e-theses portal? How should DART-Europe go about finding out? What are the technical/cost implications of providing it? q Content decisions: definition of research theses, doctoral theses? Should metadata-only records be harvested? Again, implications of these decisions? q From prototype to full service: when? q Marketing the service: how should it be marketed; who will pay? q Usage: what to measure, how to measure it, how much will it cost? q Sustainability: transition to service requires service stability and commitment to long-term maintenance and development. q What is the right business model? q How far will each additional technical improvement inflate the running costs of the service?

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES e. Content. Plus 2007 q A proposal was outlined for e. Content. Plus 2007 q Key elements: an expanded, enriched, multilingual Portal; culture change and IPR; Bologna and ERA q Proposal was not submitted. Main reasons: q Time q Changing repositories landscape (eg developing relations with GUIDE, DRIVER; NEEO work on multilingual support) q Confidence that worthwhile progress could be made on existing resources q e. CPlus 2008 remains an option, if warranted q Additional/alternative funding sources are being explored, e. g. for retro-digitisation

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Further information q DART-Europe Web site: http: //www. dart-europe. eu/About q DEEP Portal: http: //www. dart-europe. eu q Email: m. moyle@ucl. ac. uk q Thank you