Capturing Your Intellectual Assets: How Institutional Repositories Are Part of the Solution
Researchers poring over ancient manuscripts or medieval incunabulum can still read the words set down by famous scholars of the past. Take a simple stroll through the moveable shelves of Morgan Library and one might stumble upon the original volumes of Nature, first published in 1870. The pages are a bit fragile, tinged a shade of ochre, but one can clearly read the discoveries of Alfred Wallace and J.W. Dawson or a recounting of Mr. Darwin's lecture at the French Institute. As the old adage says, "It's the printed word that lasts forever."
In today's world, every day we generate billons of digital files. In fact, the intellectual output of more and more of our top researchers and academics across the nation is born in digital form. Yet, what are we doing to capture those files and make sure that the basis of our current thinking will be preserved for generations? Who is to say that the research data you are gathering for your current project will be available ten years from now when you or a colleague would like to pick it back up again and examine some other angle of your thesis? Who can guarantee that the presentation you gave at a most recent conference will be accessible so that a colleague or student might be inspired by your discoveries sometime into the future?