The Barometer Online

Issue date: 4/9/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Cory Reed Terry Reese, the Grey Family Chair for Innovative Library Services, wrote a position paper that started the open archive mandate when he stood in as library administrator.

Oregon State's Institutional repository, used for archiving and preserving documents generated by OSU's faculty, is acclaimed because of the number of archived documents it holds for a school of its size.

This repository is now joined by an "Open Access," or OA repository, which will house the works of faculty publishers. First and foremost, however, is the fact that the OSU library faculty agreed to a mandate within their department to have their faculty deposit their works to the repository.

This is because often times just publishing an article to a personal website will not allow that article to be widely seen or disseminated into the research community with which it might be concerned. Because of this, as well as some faculty members' strong feelings that in order for any other department or college's faculty to make literary deposits, the OSU Library's faculty voted in March to mandate an Open Access repository for at least the library's faculty itself.

There were many influences and guiding hands in this project as it began to take shape and quickly gain momentum after Terry Reese, who heads the Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services, filled in one day for Karyle Butcher in her position as Director of University Libraries.

It is a chance for someone from the Valley Library's faculty to stand in.

"It was fun, and a good time to mention things you want the library to do," Reese said.

In the latter part of the day, Reese suggested at a faculty discussion that they take an active part in getting the rest of OSU's faculty to submit their work to the library repository.

Within a week of the initial discussion, Michael Boock, the head of Digital Access Services for the library, had written a proposal to be put before the entire library faculty. The policy, as was approved and agreed to by the faculty, mandates that OSU Libraries faculty contribute their "scholarly works" in the interest of aiding current and future research around the globe.

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