------ Forwarded Message
From: Charles Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:22:38 -0400
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: November 12 seminar on "Opportunities for Publishers in a World of
Institutional Repositories"

Society for Scholarly Publishing seminar in Washington DC on November 12
explores ³Opportunities for Publishers in a World of Institutional
Repositories.² 
 
A seminar organized by the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) will be
held at the American Geophysical Union in Washington, DC, on November 12,
2007. A distinguished panel of speakers will explore the ways in which
publishers and librarians can collaborate more effectively in building and
sustaining digital repositories. Registration is open now at
http://www.sspnet.org

Chuck Henry, president of CLIR, will open the seminar by attempting to
define the concept of the ³digital repository.² He will explore the
differences between institutional and disciplinary configurations, and
assess the impact of existing models on the world of scholarly
communication. 

Thornton Staples, a pioneer in digital library development at the University
of Virginia, and now a director of the Fedora Commons organization, will
lead participants through the technology behind digital repositories, and
the challenges different platforms (such as D-Space, E-Prints, Fedora) pose
when structuring and managing digital information.

Amy Friedlander, director of programs at CLIR, will survey the way in which
repositories are changing the ways in which scholars work and share their
knowledge in the sciences. She will investigate the tensions among data,
archiving, and publication, and the implications for scholarly publications,
repository systems, and cyberinfrastructure.

John Unsworth, chair of the American Council of Learned Societies committee
on cyberinfrastructure in the humanities and social sciences, and co-author
of the landmark ACLS report on ³Our Cultural Commonwealth,² will provide
some empirical evidence and representative case studies of institutional
repositories in the arts and humanities as they exist now, and explore some
of the challenges and opportunities he sees for publishers and librarians in
the future. 

Kate Wittenberg, director of electronic publishing at Columbia University,
will explore editorial and business models for developing and then
sustaining discipline-based digital repositories. She will also discuss
effective strategies for identifying potential disciplinary areas, acquiring
content for these resources, and the organizational and staffing
requirements for successful development and sustainability.

Thomas Garnett, associate director for digital library and information
systems at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, will describe his
experiences in building the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), an
ambitious repository project in the field of biological sciences involving
ten major natural history libraries and associated publishers.

Thomas Nygren, executive director of Aluka, will explore the strategic
issues this important digital project in the field of African Studies has
faced in its progress toward self-sustainability.

Throughout the session, the speakers will offer practical examples of the
challenges that repository building involves and will show how the unique
skills that librarians and publishers possess can be effectively harnessed
to overcome these. Ample opportunity for discussion will be provided, and a
networking lunch is included in the registration fee.

The full seminar schedule and registration details are online at
http://www.sspnet.org



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