University E-Repositories: Solutions for the Scholarly Community
The Libraries will host “University E-Repositories: Solutions for the Scholarly Community,” the fourth colloquium in an ongoing series, on September 29, 2005, from 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. in the Cape Cod Lounge of the UMass Amherst Student Union. Ann Wolpert, MIT, and Nancy Fried Foster, University of Rochester, will discuss the issues and implications of E-Repositories to faculty, librarians, and graduate students.
The changing nature of scholarly communication requires the examination of new ways of gathering, archiving, and disseminating scholarly research. Institutional repositories—digital collections that capture and preserve the intellectual output of a university community—offer a strategic response to systemic problems in the existing scholarly journal system. Universities and research centers throughout the world are actively planning the implementation of institutional repositories
Ann Wolpert is the Director of Libraries at MIT and co-leader of MIT’s institutional repository, DSpace. A model for many other universities, DSpace was developed over the past two years by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. Prior to joining MIT, Wolpert was Executive Director of Library and Information Services at the Harvard Business School. She has a B.A. from Boston University and an M.A. from Simmons. She currently serves as President of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and member of the Board of Directors of the Boston Library Consortium, among many other affiliations.
Nancy Fried Foster is the Lead Anthropologist and Co-manager of the Digital Initiatives Unit, River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester. She conducts research on faculty, staff, and students to document work habits and identify needs for web-based products to support research and writing. Before joining the library staff, Nancy conducted research in small indigenous communities in Brazil and Papua New Guinea as well as in educational, commercial, and not-for-profit organizations in the United States and England. She has a Ph.D. in applied anthropology from Columbia University and a diploma in social anthropology from Oxford.
Their talks will be followed by responses from the floor and a question and answer session. A wine and cheese reception will follow the event.