INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES: PRESERVING AND ORGANIZING WHAT YOU CREATE TODAY FOR TOMORROW'S RESEARCHERS

What are you creating, sticking on a shelf, in a storage room, filing in a black hole, or on your computer and then losing? Where are your slides, digital images, posters session posters, field note books, and data from last year, 5 years ago? What about senior theses, student research projects, specimen collection inventories or finding guides? The DSpace institutional repository system developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries with the Hewlett Packard Corporation, is open source software being used by over 100 research institutions around the world to preserve, organize, and provide access in digital form to the knowledge being created at their institution. The number of institutional repositories is increasing but they need content, particularly geoscience content. The Ohio State University Libraries, in partnership with the Office of the CIO, has developed the OSU Knowledge Bank. 31 communities have established collections in the Knowledge Bank so far including the Department of Geological Sciences and the Byrd Polar Research Center. This paper describes the philosophy behind institutional repositories, their potential value, and the role of the subject librarian in identifying collections.