--- Boloka, the Research Repository of the North-West University in South Africa was exposed to the global research community today in the DRIVER Research Infrastructure. As the first African repository to go global, this achievement highlights the imminent launch of a new international repository organisation supported by DRIVER - known as COAR - the Confederation of Open Access Repositories. COAR aims to promote greater visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of Open Access digital repositories. The launch of COAR is expected to take place during Open Access Week 2009, at the DRIVER Confederation Summit, to be held at the University of Ghent in Belgium. Boloka represents the growing interest in building a global information infrastructure, and the ease with which Boloko was validated and registered into the DRIVER infrastructure speaks highly of the interoperability standards achieved. The contents of Boloka - which in the Tswana language means to store, to keep safe, or to preserve - can now be searched in conjunction with over 1 million other research papers harvested by DRIVER and made openly accessible through Open Access institutional repositories. The repository comprises electronic theses, an Open Access journal (Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal) as well as the research output of the University of the North West, and periodic harvesting will capture incremental growth. As many OAI repositories contain restricted content, DRIVER harvests only those repositories that voluntarily register for prior validation and confirmation of data quality. To assist in improving data standards, and ultimately ensuring the interoperability of data in global information spaces, DRIVER provides support for repository managers in online Guidelines for Content Providers. Congratulations are due to repository manager, Louw Venter, and his team at NWU . Louw says: " This has been a tough road for us so far having to figure out a lot of things on our own, so we are also very proud of what we've achieved, in what I think is a relatively short time. Initially I just used the Validation tool to see if our repository is more or less on track and was reassured when the results looked good, which gave me confidence to register." Repository managers are invited to validate their own repository and register with confidence in the knowledge that the research papers of the local institution can enjoy international exposure to their respective disciplines and subject communities. To find out more, visit the Driver website: Register your Repository: http://validator.driver.research-infrastructures.eu/validatorWeb/ ------------------------------------------ Dr D Peters Scientific Technical Manager DRIVER II State and University Library of Goettingen peters_at_sub.uni-goettingen.de Tel: +49 551 39 5242 Fax: +49 551 39 5222 Mobile:+49 (0)160 989 67663 ------------------------------------------ http://www.driver-repository.eu/ http://www.driver-support.eu/en/ ****************************************************************** Dr. Norbert Lossau Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek/ Goettingen State and University Library, Germany Direktor lossau_at_sub.uni-goettingen.de Tel. + 49 551 39-5212 Fax + 49 551 39-5222 ******************************************************************** This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.Received on Thu Aug 13 2009 - 16:18:50 BST
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