Digital Collections Team
Minutes
June 17, 2009

Present: Susan Graham (chair), Lynda Aldana, Tom Beck, Joe Clark, Michelle Flinchbaugh, Janet Hack, Steve Jones, Lindsey Loeper, Robin Moskal, Vicki Sipe

Terry Owens, DRUM Coordinator, McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, presented on DRUM, the University of Maryland's Institutional Repository.

Terry distributes brochures used for DRUM publicity and talked about his outreach efforts. Terry stated that he always uses the term "Digital Repository" with faculty rather than "Institutional Repository." Terry presents at all new faculty orientations. When Terry started work, the Dean of Library's sent an introduction to faculty in targeted departments. Terry has partnered with the Office of Research. When Terry talks with faculty, he talks with them about their interests, on topics such as authors' rights, and he tries to get them talking about their research. He said to find out what they're interested in. Most of the time Terry has to put materials in DRUM for faculty because they don't have time to do it themselves.

DRUM is running on D-Space. Terry indicates that it's out-of-the-box and easy to implement, but that the instance at CP is highly customized with programmer support. DRUM is organized by school and department, and there's a separate section for thesis and dissertations and they're mapped into the appropriate departments. Deposit of all thesis and dissertations has been required since 2003. They are sent to Proquest then Proquest sends them to DRUM.

DRUM accepts materials in all formats except executable files. Terry indicates there have materials such as videos of presentation and music and that they've even loaded someone's entire database. There are no standard file types for any format, but he is working on converting Postscript files that can no longer be used to PDF files, and trying to get the Grad School to have music submitted in the more stable .wav format as opposed to as MP3's. Terry indicates that some musical performance while completely archived can only be made partially publicly available because of the performance of copyrighted materials. Arrangements are in place with with institutions and departments for deposit of technical reports, and arrangements are in place with some to do the deposits in the departments. Different Tech Centers have different workflows for their technical reports.

Terry handles all copyright. Terry highly recommends SHERPA/RomMEO for figuring out publishers copyright and self-archiving policies. In DRUM, there is a field for a "Required Publisher Statement" where any required statements or links are placed. Students are allowed to request embargo of their thesis and dissertations for 1 year, 6 years, or indefinitely. About 30% of submitted ETD's each semester have embargos on them.

Terry indicates there is no official policy for preservation of digital materials so print copies of all thesis and dissertations are still obtained and maintained.