International Scholarly Communication Initiative / Document / NewsLetter

Izumi Sugita (NII)

The SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 took place in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, on November 17–18, 2008, sponsored jointly by SPARC, SPARC Europe, and SPARC Japan (Project of the National Institute of Informatics: NII). This was the second meeting convened by SPARC to address the subject of institutional repositories (the first was in November 2004), and in her welcome speech SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph expressed pleasure at having representatives of the three cosponsors present as well as so many people from all over the world.

SPARC Japan played an active role from the planning stages onward, being represented on the Program Committee and contributing 5,000 dollars toward expenses. In addition, the Japanese Coordinating Committee for University Libraries served as a supporting organization.

SPARC Digital RepositoriesMeeting 2008参加者<空>

From left,
Richard Johnson (SPARC Senior Advisor),
Masamitsu Negishi (Chair, SPARC Japan),
David Prosser (Director, SPARC Europe),
Heather Joseph (SPARC Executive Director),
Jun Adachi (Director, Cyber Science Infrastructure Development Department, NII)

第2回 SPARC Japan Seminerの様子<空>

A total of some 340 participants attended, mainly from university libraries in the United States and Canada, as well as Germany, Britain, Belgium, Sweden, India, and Singapore. Ten people attended from Japan, including NII staff and university librarians involved in NII’s Institutional Repositories Program under the Cyber Science Infrastructure (CSI) initiative.

The program delved into four key areas: New Horizons, Campus Publishing Strategies, Value-Added User Services, and the Policy Environment, with three speakers and a discussion in each area. From Japan, Mr. Hideki Uchijima, librarian of Kanazawa University Library, spoke on developing value-added user services and described the work of the Digital Repository Federation (DRF), one of the projects commissioned under CSI.

On the Policy Environment panel, Prof. Syun Tutiya of Chiba University, speaking from the standpoint of SPARC Japan, compared open access in Japan four years ago and today and speculated on the future.

At the Innovation Fair, which emphasizes unusual technologies, strategies, and approaches, Mr. Tomonari Kinto of the University of Tsukuba spoke about the SCPJ (Society Copyright Policies in Japan) database project. The audience laughter on being told that in Japan, when he explains open access to researchers, they often say “What’s that?” suggested that many attendees face a similar situation in their own organizations.

The Luncheon Keynote speaker on the second day was Bob Witeck, a leading player in realizing the NIH mandate for public access. He was introduced by NII’s Prof. Jun Adachi, who first introduced the work of SPARC Japan and the NII Institutional Repositories Program (NII-IRP).

In his Closing Remarks, Prof. Masamitsu Negishi of NII (Chair, SPARC Japan) hailed the meeting’s success and looked toward the future.