SUNScholar/Open System
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Introduction
In order to indefinitely preserve the digital research record of the University, common sense demands that an open and interoperable system be used and that the system be hosted by the University itself.
We have no way of predicting what technology will be used in the far future by researchers, therefore the safest bet for preserving today's digital record for the benefit of future researchers, is to use an open system based on open standards and software.
In addition it would be extremely unwise, to trust an external party to archive the most important digital assets of the University and therefore allow another crisis to develop regarding the monopolisation of a critical academic research resource for the financial benefit of a few commercial companies.
The preservation of the open digital academic record is now the responsibility of "modern" digital library professionals.
Click on the graphic to view the original published article.
The internet itself is a perfect example of an open technological system that has survived more than forty years (let's hope is stays open), principally because it was designed and constructed using open standards and software. Using the internet as an example, SUNScholar has been built and is being preserved using the same principles that were applied for the internet.
Further Reading
- DSpace interoperability guidelines.
- Why we used an Ubuntu server.
- Using an open reference architecture as a system standard.
- Introduction to the self-hosting value proposition.
- How to implement long term repository preservation.
- Building very long term operational and technical support capacity.
- List of available digital repository software.
References
Below are links to Wikipedia articles detailing some of the principles and standards used.
- https://openstandard.mozilla.org
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoperability
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Archival_Information_System
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Archives_Initiative
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_specifications
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-system_environment_reference_model
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_standard
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in
