Read about MIT Libraries’ news in the latest issue of BiblioTech.  In this issue:

• From the Director–a column by Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries
• New Technologies–an article about the Libraries’ beta projects
• From the Archives–a column by Tom Rosko, Head of the Institute Archives & Special Collections
• Supporting the Libraries–news about recent gifts to the Libraries
• DSpace Community Grows–an article about the newly formed DSpace Foundation
• Saving Endangered Languages–an article about preserving the work of late MIT linguistics professor Kenneth Hale

Get a PDF copy of BiblioTech or subscribe by emailing your name and address to dev-lib@mit.edu.

Today HP and the MIT Libraries announced the formation of the DSpace Foundation, a non-profit organization that will provide support to the growing community of organizations that use DSpace, an open source software solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works in a digital archive. Jointly developed by HP and the MIT Libraries beginning in 2002, today more than 200 projects worldwide are using the software to digitally capture, preserve and share their artifacts, documents, collections and research data.

The foundation will assume responsibility for providing leadership and support to the ever growing DSpace community and promote even wider distribution and use. Michele Kimpton, formerly of the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), will serve as Executive Director of the DSpace Foundation. Prior to joining DSpace, Kimpton led web-archiving technology and services at the Internet Archive where, as one of its founding directors, she initiated and managed several open source software projects to collect, access and preserve web pages from national libraries and archives.

See full story

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Friday, July 20, noon – 1pm

While you won’t come out of this session qualified to be a patent attorney, you will be able to successfully find patent references from all over the world and know how to obtain patent text and diagrams.

The session will be a hands-on practicum which will help de-mystify the patent literature and expose attendees to key resources for finding patent literature. Using patent literature is important for understanding competitive technologies and keeping abreast of current product innovations.

Feel free to bring your lunch! Drinks and dessert will be provided.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

Contact the Science Library for more information.

Full schedule of JulyAP 2007 information workshops

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Friday, July 13, noon – 1pm

Can you use and re-use your own work for future writing and teaching? Or is it locked tight behind a vault of copyright restrictions?

This session will help you find the keys to fully realize the potential of your own work for yourself and the world. It will provide a very brief summary of copyright law and how it affects your work, and an overview of actions you can take to improve the impact and reach of your research – including why retaining rights to your work matters, and how you can take advantage of such rights to increase citation and readership.

Feel free to bring your lunch! Drinks and dessert will be provided.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

Contact the Science Library for more information.

Full schedule of JulyAP 2007 information workshops

What’s the big deal about open access anyway? If I’m writing an article, what rights should I keep? Where can I find out more?

Check out http://libraries.mit.edu/open-access to find out what’s happening nationally and beyond, and http://libraries.mit.edu/rights to find out how to retain your rights and increase the impact of your research.

Look for these posters showing current Open Access Models at the Engineering and Science Libraries (Barker, Hayden, Lindgren and Aero/Astro).

Photo of MIT’s Stata Center by Andy Ryan

A $724,415 grant from The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has been awarded to the MIT Libraries to address the challenge of preserving digital Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files.

CAD has revolutionized the architectural industry, giving architects the ability to create astounding three-dimensional models.  However CAD models exist only in proprietary digital formats that are ever-changing and short-lived, making them difficult to preserve and manage over time.  Using the designs of renowned architect Frank Gehry and his work on MIT’s Stata Center as a test bed, the FACADE (Future-proofing Architectural Computer-Aided Design) project will study CAD architectural documents and create preservation strategies to stem their potential loss.

Over the next two years the MIT Libraries’ Digital Libraries Research Group (DLRG) will work with MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning to research the primary software products (such as CATIA®, AutoCAD® and Microstation®) that produce architectural CAD models. With the guidance of former dean of the School of Architecture and Planning Bill Mitchell, the researchers will examine the role of CAD files in the life cycle of modern architecture and building construction including the entire digital and paper trail from early designs and sketches to internal communications regarding onsite revisions. They will seek strategies for long-term preservation of this material and also investigate the optimal use of digital preservation archives, such as the DSpace digital repository system, to provide open-source solutions.

Read the full article in BiblioTech (pages 8-9)
Visit the FACADE project web page

MIT recently received a $1,500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the next phase of a project that promises to create new search technologies for digital libraries.

The project, called SIMILE, brings together researchers from the MIT Libraries Digital Library Research Group (DLRG) and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) to create next-generation search technology using Semantic Web standards–a group of standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to promote large-scale interoperability and reusability of content on the Web.

“With digital content increasing at a rapid rate; searching for, sorting through, and managing millions of digital documents is a serious challenge for today’s libraries and the libraries of tomorrow,” said MacKenzie Smith, Associate Director for Technology at MIT Libraries. Semantic Web technologies offer a way to make searching and navigating large digital libraries easier.

The new SIMILE work funded by the Mellon Foundation will focus on building software tools that can be used with large collections of digital content from the higher education and cultural heritage sectors. These will include authoring and editing tools, searching and browsing tools, tools for data management, and storage technologies to meet the needs of scholars, researcher and students. SIMILE technology will also be applied to DSpace, the open source digital archiving platform created by the MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard to manage and make accessible millions of digital documents including research articles and scientific databases.

DSpace is featured on a new web site devoted to educational technology innovations at MIT. The Educational Transformation through Technology at MIT site details the commitment, strategy and impact of the DSpace project and features a video interview with MIT’s Director of Libraries, Ann Wolpert, and the Libraries’ Associate Director for Technology and acting director of the DSpace project, MacKenzie Smith.

The Educause web site has made available an audio file (MP3) of an interview with MacKenzie Smith (Associate Director for Technology) about topics such as the Science Commons, governance of DSpace, the MIT Libraries’ investigation of Semantic Web technology via the SIMILE project, grid computing vis-a-vis the SDSC Storage Resource Broker, and digital preservation.

Ben S. Bernanke, an alumnus of MIT’s Economics Department (1979), recently has been appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Library users can access Bernanke’s doctoral thesis electronically in DSpace, MIT’s Digital Repository, at http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29839. Print copies are available on Reserve in Dewey Library (E53-100) and at the Institute Archives (14N-118, on-site use only).

MIT Libraries’ DSpace project is profiled as “one of the largest digital asset management projects in history” in a Campus Technology article on Digital Libraries- ‘Opening’ a Digital Library (September 2005).

MIT Libraries Associate Director for Technology, MacKenzie Smith discusses the proliferation of digital information and the challenge of preserving and making it accessible for years to come in Eternal Bits: How can we preserve digital files and save our collective memory (IEEE Spectrum, July 2005)

Author Simson Garfinkel reveals the premise behind DSpace, how it works, and why it’s so important to researchers in MIT’s DSpace Explained (Technology Review, July 2005).

This month’s Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections highlights the growing number of MIT theses available electronically in DSpace. The paper copies of the more than 110,000 theses written since the first class graduated in 1868 are among the collections in the Institute Archives. The Archives also holds the official records of the Institute, papers of MIT faculty members, MIT publications, and rare books.

Each month the Archives exhibits an “object” to illustrate the richness and variety of its collections and invite their further exploration. A poster is displayed in the exhibit case opposite Room 14N-118 (and the following month in the Libraries’ kiosk at the Stata Center), and a version is created for the Web. Browsing the exhibits at http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/exhibits-object.html may whet your appetite for more information about MIT’s history and the extraordinary men and women who are a part of that history.

The MIT Libraries have added over 11,000 electronic copies of MIT theses to DSpace— doubling the content of the digital archive and providing worldwide exposure to the work of MIT scholars. The MIT thesis collection is already one of the most widely-used collections of its kind and contains the theses of many well-known MIT alumni, including several Nobel Prize winners. In DSpace their work, and the valuable research of many others, will now be even more accessible from the Web.

To find theses in DSpace, go to: http://libraries.mit.edu/mit-theses. Current MIT students, faculty and staff are able to print PDF files of theses (certificates required). Non-MIT users have access to a readable copy and are given the option of purchasing printable files.

The 11,000 theses in DSpace represent a small portion of the over 100,000 theses found in the collection. The full collection of paper theses dating from 1868 can be found in the Institute Archives. More theses will be added to DSpace as they are scanned on demand or submitted electronically. Recent MIT graduates or students about to complete their degree may submit an electronic version of their theses directly to DSpace: http://web.mit.edu/etheses.

The 2nd DSpace Federation User Group meeting will be held at the University of Cambridge July 7-8, 2005. The objective of the User Group meeting is to bring together the DSpace open source community to share experiences and discuss the future development of the DSpace platform and the Federation of adopters. For more information see the meeting website.

DSpace version 1.2.2 is available. Download the newest release from SourceForge. This release includes several new features developed by members of the DSpace community.

The latest set of installation and technical documentation is also available.