200.000 records at UAB’s University Repository (DDD)

25/05/2020

DDD, UAB institutional repository, has reached 200.000 records. ¿Va a cambiar la neurología tras la pandemia de COVID-19 en los próximos 5 años? Estudio de enfoque mediante informadores clave = Will neurological care change over the next 5 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic? UAB professor José Alvarez Sabín is one of the authors of this article. We thank librarian Virtudes Guzman her job cataloging the record and uploading the article.

This figure is the result of an effort to collect scientific output and digital documents in order to curate them, increase their visibility, preserve them and give them a permanent link to documents.

200,000 is an important milestone to boost open access. The institutional repository was launched in 2006, as an UAB Library Service initiative with the cooperation of the UAB IT Service.

We have reached this figure at a time when access to printed materials and audiovisual materials stored in libraries was difficult. The present context makes clearer than ever the need to access open digital information.

Immediate access to all scientific publications and research data in all fields of knowledge would help the scientific community to carry out their work and would give citizens access to information.

We may be heading to a global change where virtual access will be more present in our lives. Therefore, we must rethink universities’ role in relation to teaching, research, as well as to access to information and its dissemination. In this new role, institutional repositories will be surely a key element. UAB DDD institutional repository gives the academic community a set of services to collect, manage, disseminate and preserve digital scientific production.

During the lockdown, many lecturers have made their own teaching materials, which may mean an opportunity to disseminate online teaching resources, facilitating that way to learning beyond classrooms, favouring inclusivity and creating new learning sites and opportunities.

Those 200.000 records are an important achievement for the dissemination of digitized collections, as they increase the visibility and accessibility of a part of Catalan cultural heritage and give access to collections managed by UAB, as well as preserving these collections.

Many of the documents in the UAB patrimonial collections are a result of the efforts of library staff, lecturers and the generosity of many individuals that have donated their documents to our University.