Stewart Bodner OCLC Members Council May 25, 2004 Going in Reverse to Go Forward: Institutional Repositories and the New York Public Library Stewart Bodner OCLC Members Council May 25, 2004

The New York Public Library Background: Maintains a research collection in four Centers: The Humanities and Social Sciences Library The Science Industry Business Library The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Library for Performing Arts Maintains a circulating collection in eighty-five Branch Libraries

The President of the Library reports to a Board of Trustees. The New York Public Library is a privately managed, non-profit corporation The President of the Library reports to a Board of Trustees. There is a Director of the Research Libraries as well as a Director of the Branch Libraries.

The Library’s Role as an Institutional Repository to take advantage of digital space to foster scholarship to develop a culture of automating in-house web-based products including portions of the Library’s digital program to digitize the extensive records of the NYPL in a deep archive

a controlled population a faculty a student body a controlled population a source of theses, dissertations, papers, pre-prints, courseware, syllabi, etc. The NYPL does not have:

Institutional records of great historical value including: annual reports, memoranda and handwritten notes of NYPL libraries dating back to the 1890’s papers of former directors including John Shaw Billings (in sixty cartons) construction documents including blueprints and drawings for NYPL buildings The NYPL does have:

Audio and video recordings including public programs in many formats Official publications of the Library 500,000 digital images

The NYPL, for most of its history, was not user-driven. In fact, for most of its history, the Library staff presumed that “current use does not constitute value.” The “deep archive” allows us to reconsider this presumption as we deliberate over the use of an institutional repository in d-space.

Information for this story was acquired through the NYPL archives. The New York Times published an article on May 11, 2004 titled: “In Back Pages, A Vivid History” Information for this story was acquired through the NYPL archives. The story discusses the history of the Seward Park Branch, a branch rich in ethnic New York history

Seward Park Branch

Challenges to IR’s at the NYPL Challenges to IR’s at the NYPL funding opaque terminology director-level decisions maintenance and migration of data lack of standards rights issues access issues preserving confidentiality

How OCLC can help: Provide simple mechanisms to implementation of IR’s establish realistic standards for creating material with d-space potential develop life-cycle management systems for maintenance and migration of data assist in advocacy efforts to fund pilot projects