On Tuesday, June 18, 2002, at 07:39 AM, David Cahill wrote:
* Getting people to use the damn thing:) As you say, this is the main obstacle to setting up an archive. One thing that has struck me is the lack of concrete backup for all the vague assurances I've been handing out about increased exposure, readership, etc. The OAI is a great idea, but in practical terms, what good is it currently doing? I know that might seem a bit cynical, but other than the experimental ARC service, I haven't really seen any examples of the 'value-added' aspect of the OAI.
From the beginning, as we have introduced our repository to our faculty and staff, we have emphasized the point that because they would be depositing their material in an OAI-compliant archive, it would automatically and painlessly be discoverable from various other points around the globe. Luckily, we were right. Within weeks (days?) of opening our doors, we had papers appear in several locations. Here is a specific example. Here is the authoritative location for a paper by Robert Cooter called "Expressive Law and Economics": http://repositories.cdlib.org/blewp/38/ Here it is at the ARC cross archive search at Old Dominion: http://arc.cs.odu.edu:8080/oai/servlet/search?formname=detail&id=oai%3Acdlib1%3Ablewp-1051 Here it is at the EconPapers archive in Sweden: http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/cdloplwec/38.htm Here it is in the WoPEc archive in the UK: http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/WoPEc/data/Papers//cdloplwec38.html Formerly, we talked about the possibilities of OAI in the abstract to our faculty. Now we can demonstrate it in reality. That, as you might imagine, is a powerful thing. Roy Tennant eScholarship, California Digital Library
