[rclis] E-LIS: an Open Archive for Library and Information Science

[Antonella De Robbio]

E-LIS: an Open Archive for Library and Information Science

Since 2003 an international service was started, for the deposit of
documents in the Library and Information Science (LIS) domain; its name
is  E-LIS.
It is the first international e-server in this area; it is a springoff
of the RCLIS (Research in Computing, Library and  Information Science)
project  <http://rclis.org> and the DoIS  (Documents in Information
Science) server <http://dois.mimas.ac.uk/>, promoted by the Hispanic
Ministry of Culture and hosted on machines of the CILEA Italian
Interuniversities Consortium for Automation and Elaboration of data.
E-LIS comes to light in order to further the Open Access philosophy to
papers in LIS and related fields.
It is a free-access international archive, in line with the Free Online
Scholarship (FOS) movement
<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/fosblog.html> and with the Eprints
movement  <http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Tp/nature4.htm>, and it
is based on the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) standards and protocols
<http://www.openarchives.org/>
E-LIS deploys the GNU Eprints (v. 2.1.1.) software and is completely
built out of free software <http://www.eprints.org/>. The GNU EPrints
software was born from an idea by Stevan Harnad,  and is developed at
the Electronics and Computer Science  Department of  Southampton
University (UK) by Christopher  Gutteridge, with the collaboration of
Mike Jewell; the design and development of version 1.0 are by Robert
Tansley and go back to 2001. GNU EPrints is Free Software, precisely
freely usable, modifiable and redistributable software, together with
its source code, on the basis of the GNU General Public License; all the
other softtware systems used are Free Software too: in fact, GNU Eprints
is for the most part built with CGI scripts in Perl, working on the
Apache http server and the MySQL relational DBMS.
The primary aim of GNU Eprints is to put fulltext documents at the
disposal of the LIS community, making them  visible, searchable,
accessible, retrievable and usable by any potential user who need them
for not-for-profit uses. A GNU EPrints server is a particular example of
Data Provider provided by the Open Archive Initiative, thought for
deposit or self-archiving of information material in electronic format.
The concept of Open Access, extended to LIS works, and their consequent
dissemination within the LIS community is a determinant factor in view
of the realization of international LIS networks.  The homepage of E-LIS
is at the address: <http://eprints.rclis.org/> . 
The site is in English, but it is possible to deposit works in any 
language, although it is recommended to include an abstract in English, 
besides that in the language of the document.
As for copyright, a suitable page was prepared, with the copyright
politics <http://eprints.rclis.org/copyright.html>  and so for the
submission politics  <http://eprints.rclis.org/policy.html>
The site is freely accessible by anyone.
For deposit however registration is mandatory.
A page is available with the instructions (help)
<http://eprints.rclis.org/help/>
Registered users can deposit documents and enjoy the alerting service.
<http://eprints.rclis.org/perl/set_password>
Moreover, it is possibile to deposit reserved/restricted access
documents, such as documents whose author rights were ceded to the
publisher.
The server accepts any format and it is even possible to enter metadata
only, without necessarily depositing the fulltext, although in this case
it is warmly recommended to enter in the suitable field the URL pointing
to the online available and freely accessible electronic resource.
Before depositing documents, it should be better to consult the E-LIS
classification schema, named JITA Classification Schema:
<http://eprints.rclis.org/JITAschema.html>
It is a very simple classification schema, resulting from the fusion
and  rearrangement of the NewsAgentTopic Classification Scheme
(maintained by Mike Keen at Aberystwyth, UK, until 31st March 1998) and
of the RIS Classification Scheme, conceived originally by Donald Soergel
(University of Maryland) for the (now ceased) Review of Information
Science.
The schema for E-LIS has (at the moment) only one gerarchical level,
with a description for each item, useful in view of deposit.
So the JITA classification scheme is not intended to be a classification
of abstract type, but its aim is very pragmatic and is that (typical of
OA environments) of presenting the documents deposited in the server for
display and retrieval, through the browsing modality, suddivided in
broad categories, without worrying too much with details.

E-LIS provides for three levels of user: registered user, editor and
site manager.
The functioning of an Eprints server is based on user registration, as a
necessary condition for deposit.
The editor validates the documents deposited by the registered users, an
as a member of th Editorial Board, is involved in the formal control on
metadata.
The site manager or system administrator can register new users and
delete them for the archive; moreover she/he can make corrections to
data and metadata, and has the general control on the overall database
and the configuration file.

Substantially there are three zones:
- the user workarea, for each registered user, where she/he enters
metadata and loads her/his own documents in various formats. Data are
left in the user workarea until they are submitted to the Editorial
Board (submit button)
- the buffer area, at the disposal of the editors, where data (metadata
and documents) are moved to undergo the validation process
- the actual archive, where documents arrive only after an editor has
validated them.
The archive is searchable (by anyone) in two modalities:
- browsing by subject or year
- search, simple or advanced.
It is possible to see the latest deposited documents

>From the retrieved metadata it is possible to reach a remote electronic
resource, or to download the document (present in the archive in one or
more formats) connected with the metadata, if it is not a reserved
access document.

Authors are invited to collaborate in the growth of this important
project, by submitting their works to the E-LIS server, so that a great
collection of freely accessible and usable LIS documents can be created,
within an international OAI compatible deposit.

We would be very glad if you too join with us in the creation of this
open access LIS database, by depositing your works in our e-server. You
are welcome!

Antonella De Robbio
http://eprints.rclis.org
Manager of the E-LIS site
mailto: eprints@dois.it