Emeryville, CA—The Company announced today that Colby College, one of the top liberal arts institutions in the nation, has selected Symposia to build the school's institutional repository. Symposia, a fully functional digital repository supported by the most trusted provider of library technology, is the ideal solution for libraries taking the lead in this new campus initiative.
"Institutional repositories are a fairly new concept at Colby. We wanted to place the library ahead of the curve on campus," says Clem Guthro, Library Director at Colby. "After weighing our options and talking to other users of Symposia, we felt that Innovative's product was the best choice."
Library staff at Colby will be incorporating a wide variety of digital content into the institutional repository. The first priority will be materials from the Undergraduate Research Symposium, a program now in its seventh year that recognizes outstanding work by the student body. At present, the papers and presentations are growing at over 500 documents a year and are planned to be submitted to the repository. Faculty papers and valuable supporting research that reside with individuals will move into the open archive arena and become searchable by Web search engines via the repository software, while being preserved in a persistent digital format. The Colby Libraries also plan to incorporate the school's college publications, committee proceedings, student newspaper, and alumni publications, as well as digitize special collections such as the College Archives.
"We need to archive and preserve information that is 'born digital' before it disappears," says Guthro. "As an elite but small college, we needed a solution that would avoid significant IT support cost. Most importantly, as an Innovative library since 1989, we know we are dealing with a trusted vendor that's consistently supported its products well. We think Colby's work with Symposia will be a model for institutional repositories at smaller institutions of higher education."
The Symposia digital repository rests on a firm foundation of XML Qualified Dublin CoreSM metadata and offers detailed statistics. Its JavaTM-based library staff client ensures that metadata is clean, indexing is advanced, and that all born-digital and other institutional materials are easily findable. Symposia includes a staff client, a simple Web-based submission tool, and a fully functional online access catalog.
About Colby
Chartered in 1813, Colby is the 12th-oldest independent liberal arts college in the nation. Colby is a highly selective liberal arts college offering world-class academic programs, strong international study options, a growing array of community- and service learning-based opportunities, a supportive community atmosphere, and rich opportunities after graduation. The College gives students a broad acquaintance with human knowledge, an array of intellectual tools, experience as active participants in a diverse community of scholars, and opportunities to engage the world.
About Innovative Interfaces
For over 25 years, Innovative Interfaces has dedicated its energies to meeting the needs of libraries and the challenges of library automation. Core to this mission are trusted products including the Millennium integrated library technology platform, INN-Reach next-generation resource sharing, the Symposia digital repository, and Electronic Resource Management. Today, thousands of libraries of all types in over 40 countries rely on Innovative's products, services, and support. The company is located in Emeryville, California with offices around the world.
