Cornell University Library and Pennsylvania State University Libraries announce development partners to test new open-source electronic publishing system.
ITHACA, NY, & STATE COLLEGE, PA—APRIL 2006—Cornell University Library, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State University Libraries and Press, have selected six major academic libraries as international development partners to test and refine an open-source electronic publishing system for academic literature. The libraries at the Australian National University, Bielefeld University in Germany, the University of Kansas, the University of Utah, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Vanderbilt University will join in fine-tuning the open-source electronic publication delivery and management system DPubS (Digital Publishing System). DPubS was conceived by Cornell University Library to aid colleges and universities in managing and disseminating the intellectual discoveries and writing of scholars and researchers.
Each partner will use DPubS to publish locally and provide the core teams at Cornell and Penn State with feedback and suggestions to expand the capabilities and functionality of the DPubS software. The partnership will also provide the project with valuable operational experience and contribute to its open-source software development.
“The academy has begun to take greater responsibility for the content it produces and for making scholarly literature more readily accessible for greater social and scholarly impact,” says Denise Stevens, Vice Provost for Information Services and Chief Information Officer, University of Kansas. “Developing DPubS as an open-source platform for libraries and academic presses is an important step in the dissemination of scholarship.”
The involvement of peer partners is the next stage in the process of generalizing the DPubS software, supported by a $670,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. DPubS will support peer review, offer extensive administrative functionality, and allow interoperability with open-source repository systems such as Fedora™ and DSpace™.
“DPubS will offer libraries, university presses, and others the capability to publish open-access or subscription-based journals more cost effectively. It should be a terrific catalyst for change in scholarly publishing,” says Cornell University Librarian Sarah Thomas.
About Cornell University Library
Cornell University Library (CUL) is one of the ten largest academic research libraries in the United States. Within its 20 unit libraries, holdings number more than 7 million volumes. CUL subscribes to 65,000 journals and serial publications and provides access to more than 100,000 networked databases and other electronic resources. More than 115,000 volumes are added to the Library’s collections each year.
For well over a decade, CUL has been a leader in digital library and system developments. Awards received include the Scout Award for the digital math books collection, the USDA Secretary’s 1999 Honor Award for the USDA-Cornell Economics and Statistics System, and the ACRL Excellence in Academic Research Libraries Award for 2002. CUL received the 2001 LITA Library High Tech Award for outstanding communication in library and information technology and has published two award-winning monographs on digital imaging for libraries and archives. In 2001, CUL was named the Sun Microsystems Center of Excellence for Digital Libraries. CUL’s continuing collaboration with Sun Microsystems reflects Sun’s commitment to the development of digital archiving technologies. CUL also has a strong history of partnering with other institutions to leverage its expertise and to balance differing perspectives.
About Pennsylvania State University Libraries
The University Libraries is one of the country’s major research libraries and contributes substantially to the advancement of library and information science. Penn State librarians occupy leadership positions in organizations such as the Research Libraries Group (RLG), OCLC, the Digital Library Federation (DLF), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). It participated in the Making of America II Testbed Project (MOA II) funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a member of the RLG Cultural Materials Alliance. It is a member of the CIC Virtual Electronic Library (VEL), and it has just completed the Mellon-funded Visual Image User Study (VIUS) on the use of images in pedagogy and the creation of an image repository. The University Libraries has forged a dynamic new partnership with the Penn State Press to enhance scholarly communication.
For further information, please contact:
David Ruddy
Head of Systems Development and Production
Center for Innovative Publishing
Cornell University Library
Ithaca, NY 14853
+1 607 255 6803
dwr4@cornell.edu