DSpace Continues Apace

"DSpace, the digital archive set up by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will have 5,000 items archived by this fall, and plans call for adding 7,500 theses later this year. MIT estimates that the free software has been downloaded 3,400 times and says it's aware of 100 research institutions that are evaluating DSpace with an eye toward archiving their own faculty's publications. The process of moving scholarly work directly into an institutional repository is changing the whole academic publishing model, because the process eliminates the publisher middleman completely in many cases. The new arrangement is preferable, say some scholars, because journals often delay publication of research findings and their audience is limited because they're so expensive."

TECHNOLOGY; In DSpace, Ideas Are Forever (from ShelfLife No. 119).