Academic Archive - Policies

Purpose
The purpose of the SNHU Academic Archive is to preserve and make accessible the intellectual output of Southern New Hampshire University, and encourage an open access environment. The Academic Archive supports the Shapiro Library’s mission “to promote successful academic careers and lifelong learning through the delivery of information and instruction using innovative services and technologies.”

In 2008, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded a three-year grant to Southern New Hampshire University to create an open source, open access repository of student and faculty papers from the School of Community Economic Development and the International Business program.

These collections include important field-recorded research data sets, master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and working papers concerning low-income and marginalized communities around the globe. They are principally in English. The first two years of the grant, 2009-2010, focus primarily on student work from the School of Community Economic Development. Year three will involve digitization of faculty papers and dissertations from the International Business program.

The Academic Archive also strives to acquire resources related to the intellectual output of the university, including student and faculty papers, newsletters, speeches, campus symposia, and student publications. During the IMLS grant period, the student theses from the School of Community Economic Development and the International Business program’s faculty papers have top priority.

Who maintains the Academic Archive?
The Academic Archive is maintained by the Shapiro Library and Computing Resources, and is powered by DSpace open source software. It provides open access, long-term digital preservation, and full-text searching for institutional resources.

Items in the Academic Archive are accessible not only from the Academic Archive, but also the Shapiro Library online catalog, WorldCat, the OpenDOAR repository collection website, and even a well-phrased Google search.

If you are interested in starting a collection in the Academic Archive, or contributing to an existing collection, contact the Digital Initiatives Librarian at digital.libstaff@snhu.edu.

SNHU Academic Archive Policies
The following policies explain the principles, responsibilities, and guidelines for Southern New Hampshire University’s digital repository, known hereafter as the SNHU Academic Archive, or the Academic Archive. They express in detail Southern New Hampshire University’s commitment to digital preservation and access made available through the work of the Shapiro Library and Computing Resources.

These policies will be reviewed on or before September 2011, when the IMLS grant period has concluded. (Last revision date: March 12, 2010).

Principles
The Shapiro Library and Computing Resources will:

• Retain all items indefinitely
• Ensure that anyone may access metadata (descriptive information such as title, date, abstract) free of charge
• Ensure that all full-text resources are freely accessible
• Follow the standards presented by the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and the guidelines for Trusted Digital Repositories
• Follow best practices of leading libraries and digital archives
• Keep statistics of repository use

Roles and Responsibilities
Many people are ultimately involved in the process of access and preservation, including creators, users, and curators. Each has a responsibility to understand the following policies.

Creator Responsibilities 

• Items may only be submitted by SNHU academic staff, and registered students of the institution.
• Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
• The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the submitter.
• The administrator only vets items for the eligibility of authors/submitters, relevance to the scope of the repository, valid layout and format, and the exclusion of spam.
• Changes to deposited items are not permitted.
  • Errata and corrigenda lists may be included with the original record if required.
  • If necessary, an updated version may be deposited.
    1. There will be links between earlier and later versions, with the most recent version clearly identified.
• Items may not normally be removed from the repository.
  • Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:
    1. Proven copyright violation or plagiarism
    2. Legal requirements and proven violations
    3. National Security
    4. Falsified research
• Items may not be submitted until any publishers' or funders' embargo period has expired.
• Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/submitters.
• Reported violations of copyrights will be dealt with in accordance with the appropriate copyright law.
• If the repository receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.
  • The full text of withdrawn items is deleted entirely from the database.
  • Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely.
  • URLs will continue to point to 'tombstone' citations, to avoid broken links and to retain item histories.
  • The metadata of withdrawn items will not be searchable.

User Responsibilities

• No rights have been granted for re-use of full text of the items.
• The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes, provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record is given.
• The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission from the SNHU Digital Initiatives Librarian.

Curator Responsibilities

• The Digital Initiatives Librarian is responsible for managing the repository, including creation of metadata standards, scanning workflows, policy development, and quality control.
•  The Digital Content Specialist creates Community Economic Development-related subject-specific keywords, and writes abstracts and descriptions if not already provided by the author.
• Two graduate assistants are responsible for scanning analog documents, optical character recognition (OCR) processing, and access file (PDF) creation.
• The Implementation Committee is comprised of the Dean of the Library, the Electronic Resources Librarian, the University Webmaster, the Dean of the School of Community Economic Development, and the head of the IT department. This committee meets on an as-needed basis to monitor the implementation of the archive during the grant period.
• The Policy Committee is comprised of the Dean of the Library, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Digital Content Specialist, Electronic Resources Librarian, Technical Services Librarian, Access Services Librarian, and the Associate Dean of the Faculty. It is tasked with determining policies for the repository and discusses any other policy questions that might arise, whether they are related to file format questions, collection development, or questions about metadata. The Policy Team meets on a regular basis.
• The Computing Resources department is responsible for maintaining the servers, the DSpace software, and also for preventing loss of data.

Preservation Policies
The following policies will be followed to preserve the information in the Academic Archive.

• The repository will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
• Items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary and when possible.
• The repository regularly backs up its files according to current best practices.
• In the event of the repository being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.

Challenges and incentives to digital preservation
There are many challenges involved with digital repositories and digital preservation management.

• The digital preservation field is experiencing changes at a very quick pace. Changes in file formats, storage capacities, and hardware and software must be monitored closely.
• No one can solve digital access and preservation problems alone. The library and the university Computing Resources department must work together to achieve solutions.
• U.S. law regarding copyright of digital materials is ambiguous.
• Digital repositories are relatively new service, resulting in inconsistent industry standards that are subject to change. The library must periodically review current available standards and determine which guidelines work best with our institution’s goals and resources.
• Users must become comfortable with both accessing and submitting items to the repository; this will require a certain amount of training and education of both students and faculty.

The advantages of digital preservation and access, however, outweigh the challenges.

• The university’s intellectual output is all housed in one place, accessible from one search.
• Content that was once only accessible onsite at the university is now available worldwide.
• Students are provided a method to publish their best work.
• Digital objects no longer will be “lost” on the web. Each object has its own unique identifying address that remains assigned to that object in perpetuity, even if the object moves to a different location in cyberspace.
• Files are migrated to current formats on a regular basis, so the original creation software is not necessary to access a file’s information.
• The institutional repository raises the university’s visibility in the academic community.