[eifloa] eIFL INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES SETTING THE PLATFORM FOR INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION!!

Thu Nov 1 14:27:02 EET 2007

Congratulations Susan and eIFL - http://eifl.cq2.org is an impressive project and a huge step in standardizing and promoting our local OA repositories! It has already helped Ukrainian repositories to correct existing records. 
I am also interested in adding some extra top level services to it like for example top 10 scholars of the months, top 10 student researche of the months, citation indexes (both national and international). 
Keeping in touch,  
Best wishes,
Iryna.    
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kathy Matsika 
  To: Susan Veldsman ; eifloa at eifl.net 
  Cc: lawrence chikwanah ; lchikwanha at cut.ac.zw ; kathy matsika ; Buhle Mbambo ; Audrey Mhlanga ; Sheila Ndlovu ; Bilha Pfukani ; daphne sibanda 
  Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 6:34 PM
  Subject: Re: [eifloa] eIFL INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES SETTING THE PLATFORM FOR INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION!!

  Dear Susan

  This is very impressive and will motivate more libraries to do something about Institutional Repositories.
  I will certainly send it to my Colleagues in ZULC and speed up developments in my own Library.
  Once again, well done.
  Kathy

  Susan Veldsman <susan.veldsman at eifl.net> wrote:
    --> 
    Dear colleagues,

    Over the last year we have been working hard to create a database and record all aspects of Institutional Repositories that have been developed in all our member countries. After a lot of correspondence and updating with countries, we can now report that 17 member eIFL countries currently have:

    -          27 repositories in progress
    -          69 active repositories, 
    -          Total of 96 institutional repositories

    This gave us the opportunity to look for international co-operation with other projects. Being so closely associated with SURF, the Netherlands, eIFL  were quite aware of the DRIVER project and it follow up DRIVER II sister project. (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research:DRIVER) that they were involved in. One of the objectives of DRIVER is to organize and build a virtual, European scale network  (portal) of existing institutional repositories from the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Belgium.

    eIFL saw the challenge and decided to piggy back on the expertise and technology infrastructure that the DRIVER project already had in place. Talks began with all parties involved and during June/July 2007 a similar portal(network) was created and can currently be viewed at http://eifl.cq2.org. (please not that this is only a test site and not to be distributed yet) We hope in two weeks time (GA)  we will have something that you could show the world!

    This, therefore, implies that , eIFL has organized and built a virtual, eIFL member country scale network  (portal) of existing institutional repositories from eIFL countries!!!!

    This is only the beginning of a long journey. A meeting was held in Utrecht in October  to discuss the way forward with this portal/infrastructure we have created. The decision was that

    -          a contract will be signed till December  2007 with the IT company to refine and adjust the portal
    -          general data e.g. base URLs, contact people , etc  will be continuously updated
    -          the portal will get an eIFL look and feel to it (currently it is on the test site, and resembles nothing of eIFL)!
    -          The metadata will be cleaned up, so that we could present it internationally
    -          A statistical programme will also be attached to it , to monitor usage from across the world

    eIFL’s ultimate goal is to develop these repositories and getting them on an international standard. This will be done by training e.g  metadata, other standards, linking, setting up repositories. Etc etc These repositories should be at such a level so that they could easily feed or be included in e.g. DRIVER project.

    This has brought a great profile to eIFL and feedback has been with big enthusiasm and excitement!. 

    This is not the only activities we are envisaging, we are also busy to “mass register”  eIFL repositories in IR registers and harvesters (OAIster and OpenDOAR) We are also looking at additional training that could be given to countries to “move” their repositories form inactive to active, as well as to start up repositories.

    I hope this has given countries enough overview, over the short term for the eIFL OA program?

    KIN REGARDS
    SUSAN

    +++++++++++++++++++++
    Susan Veldsman
    eIFL content Manager

    30 O'Reilly Merry Street
    Northmead
    1510
    South Africa

    Tel: +27 11 425 4736
    Fax: +27 11 425 4737

    +++++++++++++++++++++

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  Kathy Matsika Tel: 263-9-79671
  Librarian Fax: 263-9-79671 
  National University of Science & Technology
  P.O.Box AC 940 Email:kmatsika at nust.ac.zw 
  Ascot :kmatsika at yahoo.com 
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