Allan Bell
Director, Library Digital Initiatives
University of British Columbia
Alex Garnett
Digital Preservation and Data Curation Specialist
Simon Fraser University
Carla Graebner
Liaison Librarian, Economics and Government Information
Data Curator and Digital Preservation Project Manager
Simon Fraser University
Geoff Harder
Associate University Librarian, Information Resources (Acting)
University of Alberta
The University of British Columbia Library, the University of Alberta Library, and Simon Fraser University Library are collaborating with a local open-source developer of digital collections and archival software platforms in order to meet their respective needs for new digital repository initiatives at all three sites. Although each institution has some local development expertise to take full advantage of open-source software, and none is entirely a stranger to it, the collaboration remains novel in respect to the funding model that has allowed each university library to contribute their own site-specific requirements and benefit from the resulting common architecture. Each of these initiatives is library-led, leaning only on their respective information technology departments for storage infrastructure, and will continue to develop local expertise. The partners will speak about the experience and expected outcome from this collaboration, and each site will touch briefly on its own implementation plans. Simon Fraser University is providing new services for local, research data; the University of British Columbia looks to work with regional, national and campus partners to expand their effort into a campus-wide service in the future; the University of Alberta is addressing local requirements as well as those of the Canadian Polar Data Network and other partnerships.