From writing and analysis to the repository: taking the scholars' perspective on scholarly archiving

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results of a qualitative field study of the scholarly writing, collaboration, information management, and long-term archiving practices of researchers in five related subdisciplines. The study focuses on the kinds of artifacts the researchers create in the process of writing a paper, how they exchange and store materials over the short term, how they handle references and bibliographic resources, and the strategies they use to guarantee the long term safety of their scholarly materials. The findings reveal: (1) the adoption of a new CIM infrastructure relies crucially on whether it compares favorably to email along six critical dimensions; (2) personal scholarly archives should be maintained as a side-effect of collaboration and the role of ancillary material such as datasets remains to be worked out; and (3) it is vital to consider agency when we talk about depositing new types of scholarly materials into disciplinary repositories.

REFERENCES

• 1: Adams, G. 2006. Beyond OAIS. Proc. Archiving'06. (Ottawa, Canada, May 23-26, 2006), Springfield, VA: Society for Imaging Science and Technology, p. 7.
• 2: Bolter, J. 1991. Writing Space. Hillsdale, N.J.: Earlbaum
• 3: Christine L. Borgman , Jillian C. Wallis , Noel Enyedy, Little science confronts the data deluge: habitat ecology, embedded sensor networks, and digital libraries, International Journal on Digital Libraries, v.7 n.1, p.17-30, October 2007 [doi>10.1007/s00799-007-0022-9]
• 4: Geoffrey C. Bowker, Work and Information Practices in the Sciences of Biodiversity, Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.693-696, September 10-14, 2000
• 5: Diaper, D. 1993. Small-Scale Collaborative Writing Using Electronic Mail. CSCW in Practice, Germany: Springer-Verlag, pp.72--102.
• 6: Foster, N. F. & Gibbons, S. 2005. Understanding Faculty to Improve Content Recruitment for Institutional Repositories. D-Lib Magazine, 11(1).
• 7: Hey, T. and Hey, J. 2006. e-Science and its implications for the library community. Library Hi Tech, 24(4), pp. 515--528
• 8: Hitchcock, S., Brody, T., Hey, J. and Carr, L. 2005. Preservation for institutional repositories. PV2005, The Royal Society, Edinburgh, Scotland.
• 9: Kintsch, W. and van Dijk, T. 1978. Toward a Model of Text Comprehension and Production. Psych Review 85, 363--394.
• 10: Carl Lagoze , Sandy Payette , Edwin Shin , Chris Wilper, Fedora: an architecture for complex objects and their relationships, International Journal on Digital Libraries, v.6 n.2, p.124-138, April 2006 [doi>10.1007/s00799-005-0130-3]
• 11: Lynch, C. 2003. Institutional repositories: essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age. ARL Bimonthly Report, No. 226, pp. 1--7.
• 12: Lynch, C. 2007. The Shape of the Scientific Article in the Developing Cyberinfrastructure. CTWatch Quarterly, August 2007.
• 13: Marshall, C. C. 2008. Rethinking Personal Digital Archiving. D-Lib Magazine, 14 (3/4), 2008.
• 14: Marshall, C. C., McCown, F., and Nelson, M. 2007. Evaluating Personal Archiving Strategies for Internet-based Information. Proc. Archiving '07. Springfield, VA: Society for Imaging Science and Technology, pp. 151--156.
• 15: Ringel, M., Cutrell, E., Dumais, S., Horvitz, E. 2003. Milestones in time. Proc. Interact 2003, pp. 228--235.
• 16: Van de Sompel, H., Payette, S., Erickson, J., Lagoze, C., and Warner, S. 2004. Rethinking Scholarly Communication. D-Lib 10, 9.
• 17: van Ingen, C. personal communication.
• 18: Steve Whittaker , Victoria Bellotti , Jacek Gwizdka, Email in personal information management, Communications of the ACM, v.49 n.1, January 2006 [doi>10.1145/1107458.1107494]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.7 Digital Libraries
          Subjects: User issues

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.7 Digital Libraries
          Subjects: Systems issues

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
collaboration, digital archiving, personal information management, qualitative study, scholarly publishing, scholarly repositories