The Faculty Digital Archive at NYU

Connect: Information Technology 30 at NYU • Fall/Winter 2006
In this period of rapid technological
change, research and communication
systems are being
transformed and, with them, the
process of creating scholarly content.
This process is increasingly collaborative,
producing new knowledge
in dynamic, mobile, and open environments.
And each year, more and
more scholarship has a digital component
or is composed entirely of
digital content.
How does one safeguard this
scholarship for the future while
making it available to the wider
world? In the past, individuals or
their departments have attempted to
do this on their own by posting their
work on departmental web servers,
but this approach often leads to problems.
For example, links to web pages
are unstable, changing as documents
are moved on the server; servers may
not be backed up properly or at all;
and the quantity of material may
become unmanageable or outgrow
the space on the server.
To address this challenge, NYU
Libraries and ITS are preparing to
implement a digital archive for NYU
faculty. Also known as an institutional
repository, a digital archive
is “a set of services that a university
offers to the members of its community
for the management and dissemination
of digital materials created
by the institution and its community
members.”1 A faculty digital archive
can provide access to an institution’s
research through a single Internet
access point. In it, scholars can store
many different kinds of digital content,
such as digital texts, audio,
video, images, and datasets. This
versatility allows for the integration
of multiple files and formats, so that
faculty are able to associate research
data, slides, and supporting files with
papers.
The centralized framework of
a digital archive allows scholars
and departments to reliably archive
their work without having to concern
themselves with the technology
and its administration, freeing them
to focus on their academic goals.
Because the content in a faculty
digital archive can, if the depositor
wishes, be made accessible to the
world, it can increase the visibility
of a scholar’s work while providing a
permanent link for citation. Scholars
can therefore use the digital archive
to quickly “pre-publish” materials,
either to the world at large, or to a
select group of colleagues for collaboration.
Panagiotis Ipeirotis, an Assistant
Professor in the Department of
Information, Operations, and Management
Sciences at the Leonard
N. Stern School of Business, is an
example of an NYU scholar who has
begun to use the pilot Faculty Digital
Archive. Working with NYU’s digital
library team, Dr. Ipeirotis has
indexed content from more than 26
years of Stern research by both faculty
and students, concentrated in
the area of Information Systems.
While most early papers have been
published in scholarly, peer-reviewed
journals, the most recent works are at
various stages of publication.
Making preprint papers available
to others, including faculty, students,
and research affiliates, is an important
part of knowledge creation. In addition,
placing content within the Faculty
Digital Archive typically raises
its visibility in Internet search engine
results. The trend toward preprint
availability is increasingly common
among faculty at most universities.
Many faculty are also interested in
seeing their papers available on such
sites as Google Scholar (http://scholar.
google.com/), and storing their research
in the faculty digital archive will
ensure that links to these materials
will remain active over the years.
Additional information about
NYU’s new Faculty Digital Archive
will appear at http://archive.nyu.edu
once the pilot phase is complete.
Gary Shawver is a Faculty Technology
Specialist for ITS’ .edu Services.
Heather Stewart is Director of ITS
Academic Technologies. Jennifer Vinopal
is Librarian for Digital Scholarship
Initiatives at NYU’s Bobst Library and
the Digital Studio.
FA C U LT Y T E C H N O L O G Y
The Faculty Digital Archive
at NYU
By Gary Shawver, Heather Stewart & Jennifer Vinopal
gary.shawver@nyu.edu; heather@nyu.edu; vinopal@nyu.edu
1. Clifford A. Lynch, “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age,” ARL, no. 226
(February 2003): 1-7. www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html.