1st DRIVER Summit Report

"On 16 and 17 January 2008, DRIVER II successfully carried out its first Summit in Goettingen, Germany. Approximately 100 invited representatives from the European Community, including representatives of the European Commission, over 20 spokespersons of European repository initiatives as well as experts in different repository related fields from Europe, the U.S., Canada and South Africa came together to discuss their experiences and concrete actions with respect to the further building of cross-country repository infrastructures...

"...Director of the National Science Library, Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, Professor Xiaolin Zhang [wrote]: 'As China is beginning to initiate institutional repositories in its universities and research institutes, the knowledge accumulated and the infrastructure developed by DRIVER and its members would be instrumental to Chinese institutes and future Chinese IR networks. Therefore, on behalf of the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, I would like to express the interest to collaborate with DRIVER in ways fit, and to become a member in a future confederation of digital repositories.' In advance of the Summit, representatives from India and South Africa had also expressed their strong interest in becoming a part of the upcoming global repository network...

"...Deirdre Furlong [Policy Officer, EC] expressed the interest of the EC to prepare an Open Access Mandate for all EC-funded research publications and to learn how existing repository infrastructures, like DRIVER, can support this mandate...."

"The conditions to populate repositories with content and to implement a coherent European and global digital repository based eInfrastructure are more favourable than ever before. The Council's Conclusions on Scientific Information, the European Research Council Open Access mandate and the current preparation of an Open Access mandate for all EC funded research publications can draw from the existing infrastructure efforts which must be accelerated in the coming months...

"...Although funded by the EC, DRIVER II must be open to international efforts and collaborate on a global scale. This point was also clearly underlined by the EC representatives as part of the Commission's eInfrastructure strategy...

"...The EC-funded DRIVER II project is leading the way as the largest initiative of its kind in helping to enhance repository development worldwide. Its main objective is to build a virtual, European scale network of existing institutional repositories using technology that will manage the physically distributed repositories as one large scale virtual content source."