SDR Deposit of the Week: Getting Techie with the Blume Center
What do you get when you combine 14 library staff, the John A. Blume Center for Earthquake Engineering Technical Reports, the SDR self-deposit interface, and pizza? A Deposit-a-thon, of course!
A lot of valuable research done on Stanford's campus is published as part of technical reports, and as valued research output there is no better place to preserve these -- and make them easily accessible to the world -- than through the Stanford Digital Repository.
The Blume Center Technical Reports is a digital collection of earthquake engineering research dating back to 1978 that was crying out for SDR preservation. It also was the perfect vehicle for providing more of our library staff hands-on experience with the self-deposit interface.
"Our earthquake engineering center has published technical reports for over thirty years, going back to pioneering studies in earthquake risk analysis up through current research on performance-based engineering to improve community resilience to major earthquakes," says Greg Deierlein, Professor and Director of the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center. "About ten years ago, we moved from hard copy to on-line publishing of electronic reports, and while these have been effective mechanisms to distribute reports, we have been concerned with long-term preservation and access."
So, on September 11, librarians and library technology staff came together with the Blume Center to preserve these valuable reports. Fueled by pizza and the drive to preserve, the library staff made quick work of the task so that you'll be seeing this collection online in record time!
Professor Deierlein was happy with the results as well. “We have been delighted to work with Amy Hodge and the Stanford Data Management Services team to upload all of our reports to the Stanford Digital Repository, where they will be preserved and available for generations to come.”
Now you can see the very first of these technical reports to be live online! More of the reports will be coming soon!
Do you have technical reports or other research you think is worth preserving? Contact us at sdr-contact@lists.stanford.edu to find out how!
