July 12, 2006

Dear Institutional Repository Implementation Group,

I want to thank all of you for your extended service on this important committee over the last two years. Thanks to your many efforts, I believe we can discharge the committee and begin to integrate the requirements of an institutional repository with the mission of the library.

The committee has grappled with the very basic concept of an Institutional Repository for the University of Florida. Over the last year, you worked on proving and testing out that concept, identifying content from IFAS and the University’s Annual Financial Report and working through all the steps required to ingest the documents within the technical infrastructure of the UF Digital Collections. Your experience, as well documented in your final report, underscores the significant shifts in organizational resources the Library needs to commit as we re-define the Library’s preservation role in a world of digital research and scholarship.

With the start of the new fiscal year, the Library is beginning to make these commitments within the organization, adjusting assignments and resources as outlined below.

It is expected that IR support will define Digital Preservation for UF digital assets and will be the functional responsibility of the DigitalLibraryCenter. It will be the distributed responsibility of staff in Preservation, Archives, Collections, and those engaged in Outreach activities to select these resources and to set priorities for the ongoing development of the Institutional Repository.

  • Digital Preservation and the Institutional Repository will be the functional responsibility of the DigitalLibraryCenter and the UF Institutional Repository will be integrated as part of the UF Digital Collections (UFDC).
  • Digital Preservation policies will be coordinated by the DLC Director with the Preservation Officer, Collections staff, and the Florida Digital Archive.
  • Oversight of technical procedures for the IR and coordination with Collections and Systems will be included in the annual assignment of the DLC Asst. Chair
  • Ingest technician responsibilities will be assigned to a new position in the DLC.
  • Programming support from Systems will continue in the form of the two dedicatedstaff assignments that cover the priority initiatives of the DLC. 2006/2007 priorities for the UF Digital Collections include the tracking database, search enhancements, and the user submission interface.
  • OPS support of approximately $10,000 will be added to the DLC allocation for the normalization of data files to be ingested.
  • Assignments of selectors will include responsibility for identifying significant data files or other digital products that should be collected from the departments or units of the university.
  • Oversight of the University’s digital assets that need to be archived is included in the responsibility of the University Archivist. $10,000 in OPS support will be added to the Special Collections and Areas Studies allocation to aid in the proactive identification and collection of these files and datasets.
  • As the IR is developed, it will be featured as a new resource on the Library web site. The DLC development team includes a member of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department. This team will coordinate the public submission tool implementation and further web integration with the appropriate Marketing and Instructional groups in Public Services.
  • Smathers libraries will keep the Health Sciences Center Library and LegalInformationCenter informed of the UFDC and IR developments. Suggestions for contributions to the IR from these colleges are encouraged.

Again, I thank you all for your hard work getting this important initiative so well started.

Sincerely,

Martha

Forwarded to:

Library Council

Institutional Repository Implementation Group members

Faith Meakin

Kathleen Price

Rick Donnelly.