1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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:

6. 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:

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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. Seward Park Branch

14. 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

15. 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