** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2006 16:51:54 +1300
From: Nigel Stanger <nstanger@INFOSCIENCE.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Reply-To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
    <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: How to build a repository in ten days

In November 2005 we started a project to implement a pilot open access IR
using GNU EPrints. We were mightily impressed when we were able to go live
after just ten days (incidentally becoming the first publicly available IR
in New Zealand)! If that weren't enough, the number of downloads we have
been getting is nothing short of spectacular (nearly 22,000 from November 17
2005 to date).

The technology has matured sufficiently that it's now cheap and relatively
easy to set up a fully featured repository in quite a short time, and we'd
like to encourage other institutions who have been teetering on the edge of
implementation to get on their running shoes and go for it. To that end,
we've written up our story and made it available in our repository. Please
come and have a look; feedback welcome!

<http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/274/>

Abstract
A fully functional and publicly available, digital institutional repository
(IR) in the space of just ten days? The technology was available, the time
was right, the team was right and technical assistance from colleagues in
Australia was on hand a mere cyber call away. This paper reports on how we
were able to "hit the ground running" in building an open access IR in such
a short space of time. What has taken our breath away is not so much the
speed of the process, but the scale of responsiveness from the Internet
community. Consequently, we also consider the research impact of more than
18,000 downloads from eighty countries, less than three months into the
project!

--
Nigel Stanger,               <http://www.business.otago.ac.nz/infosci/>
Dept. of Information Science,    <http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger>
University of Otago, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.               +64-3-479-8179