Let us not forget, at our peril, that Jeremiah was right. And while he
passed on God's messages about the impending changes, he spoke with deep
emotion for his people because he hadn't asked to be a prophet.
The badge of Jeremiah is a proud one to wear, despite the misguided
English connotations.
But leaving history aside, the reasons why existing repositories are not
well filled are very well known, and rather ho-hum. They lie in apathy
and pressure of competing work; qualities of academics from time
immemorial. Such reasons only alter the rate of change, never its
absolute extent.
The route to filling repositories is quite clear. It must be made part of
every researcher’s routine operations. This means that their
institutions, research funders and other colleagues have to value it. The
best way to do this in less than decades is to make it a policy that
researchers must deposit all their papers. See a few of my articles
below, which show what happens then. Not theory – solid fact backed
up by evidence.
Arthur Sale (aka Archivangelist of the Antipodes)
Sale, Prof Arthur (2006) Comparison of IR content policies in Australia.
First Monday 11(4).
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_4/sale/
Sale, Prof Arthur (2006) The impact of mandatory policies on ETD
acquisition. D-Lib Magazine 12(4).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april06/sale/04sale.html
Received on Mon Aug 21 2006 - 00:33:43 BST