Back to Boston: Trouble at Harvard

Tuesday I was on the plane headed from Chicago to Boston. First thing on my agenda was a Wednesday visit to Harvard, where the science librarians are using DSpace to create an institutional repository for their stuff. In case you are curious, you can see the list of science libraries at http://lib.harvard.edu/libraries/listings_sciencelib.html . Not an insignificant number.

I met with Connie Rinaldo in the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. They have field notes and other artifacts that they are digitizing, ever so slowly. The Physics Librarian Michael Leach has led the initiative to put DSpace on the physics department server and rely on the physics department IT staff to keep it running. Truthfully, there is not much to look at yet, but it was useful to hear about the process of setting things up, bringing in faculty, deciding on material, metadata, finding staff support, etc. This is definitely a shoe-string operation, with the OK of the administration but no funding....

Did you know they have a storage facility at Harvard? I believe our SWORD modules were modeled after the Harvard model. But there's one difference. Connie says they have to pay to get materials back, so no one wants to use it. Yikes!

A funny thing happened on my trek across Harvard Yard. I could hear chanting, mostly of female voices. It was a demonstration by students railing about the President's comments on females and science/math education during a faculty senate meeting. That hit the papers big time - nationwide. What was he thinking?