The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $145,000 to the MIT Libraries to plan the development of an archive of dynamic electronic journals, those newly emerging scholarly web sites that provide a broad range of dynamic content.
"Digital sustainability is the next great challenge for research libraries. It's especially important to begin resolving the archiving issues that are inherent in these multifaceted, dynamic tools while they are still evolving," said Ann J. Wolpert, director of the MIT Libraries.
An example of this new species of scholarly publishing is the MIT Press' Cognet, launched in September 2000, to create a community forresearchers and scholars in cognitive and brain sciences. Other scholarly publishers, such as Columbia University Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have created similar dynamic publications in an environment that is experimental and evolving.
Working with publisher partners, the MIT Libraries will explore and assess possible strategies and technologies, and will plan a model for a safe repository for this new form of scholarly communication.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 7, 2001.
