Movement seeks to make research easier
USU has recently signed an agreement with the Hathi Trust group, a digital library who, according to their website, “will develop and refine the services needed to search and use a large digital collection, and realize collectively our greatest potential as a library community.”
Hathi Trust, a self-described “bold idea with big plans” was founded by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation with the stated goal of establishing a repository for universities to archive and share their digitized collections.
As a new member of the Hathi Trust group, USU will soon have access to the digitized library of Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Ohio State, and over 30 other universities throughout the U.S. In return, these universities will be able to access books published by the USU Press.
Betty Rozum, associate dean for technical services said, “This is a wonderful step for Utah State. It will help students further their research and help shape the future of scholarly communication.” She said USU’s membership will also allow the university to participate in the governance of the group, ensuring long-term access to information which could otherwise be lost.
The Hathi Trust group is one of many organizations that adheres to the philosophy “Open Access.” Though not an official organization, the open access movement has succeeded in drawing many groups to its cause, such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
Open access, said the USU Library’s Head of Collections Heather Leary, is “an alternative to for-profit publishing which provides a different model for disseminating scholarly publications.” She said that the method helps more people have access to research information.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative said, “By ‘open access’ we mean it’s free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles … .”
“There is also a human interest component,” said Jennifer Duncan, the library’s head of collections. “After students leave the university, they will no longer have access to our subscribed journals. If your child has been diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia, for example, you don’t want to pay $30 to read ever article about that condition. If research is openly available, tax payers can get access to that research for free.”
This week, SPARC is organizing a worldwide “Open Access Week” to spread awareness of the open access movement. USU is participating in the event.
Brit Fagerhein, Coordinator of Regional Campuses and Distance Education Library Services, said, “We have two stated goals: educate researchers about their rights as authors and make faculty and students aware of the movement.”
According to SPARC’s website, thousands of students and faculty from nearly 90 countries around the world are participating in the Open Access Week.
–robjepson@live.com