Implementation and outlook of a new repository system at the National Institute of Materials Science. (English)

It is well recognized that the accumulation and publication of research findings are important tasks for all research institutions. However, only very recently has the scientific community in Japan begun to appreciate the role of libraries in research institutions in carrying out these functions. The primary role of libraries is to purchase publications and keep them in storage, but libraries often do not employ professional staff with the necessary technical background, training or experience to enable them to properly carry out this function. With the ever-increasing demands of our information-oriented society impacting the research process in various ways, the inadequacies of the traditional system for the distribution and dissemination of information has in the last decade become more and more apparent. Because of the movement towards the digitization of information in academic publishing, the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in April 2008 made the decision to create a digital library accessible through the web. The creation of a digital library raises certain questions: How do such libraries and the personnel who manage them differ from their traditional equivalents? What systems are needed to facilitate their use by research scientists? In trying to find answers to these and other related questions, a research and development project was initiated at NIMS to create a digital library system "NIMS eSciDoc". This library system was designed not only to publish and accumulate newly published articles, but to also disseminate previously stored information. In Phase I, which had a primary focus on information dissemination, we investigated several possible implementations, made a number of improvements, and then began a test installation. This paper gives an overview of our project, and also shares the feedback we received from a NIMS-affiliated scientist, who conducted a comparative analysis of our project's dissemination ability relative to other document/video sharing services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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