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Digital Library Services Centre >> FAQs
Mission Statement
The University of the West Indies Digital Library Services Centre (DLSC) is dedicated to the production, maintenance, delivery and preservation of digital information resources in support of the University's teaching, research and learning goals.
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UWISpace of the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus consists of scholarly/research output of the academic community of the Campus. The UWISpace repository enables the library to capture, preserve and distribute the intellectual output of the University. The UWISpace is organized according to “communities”, academic departments and other research Units of the St. Augustine Campus. Any faculty, department, research unit is eligible to participate as a community. UWISpace
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) [top] UWISpace is managed by The Main Library on the St. Augustine Campus of The University of the West Indies. The UWISpace administrators can be contacted at 1-868-662-2002 Exts. 4243. Who can access information on UWISpace? For the most part, anyone can access information on UWISpace as it is a web based service built on the principles of open access. However, there may be some collections where restrictions may apply. Persons who are not members of the UWI Campus community may be required to pay a fee to access information on UWISpace.[top] UWISpace is comprised of communities – groups that contribute content to the repository – and communities in turn each have collections, which contain the content items, or files. At The University of the West at St. Augustine, for example, communities might be faculty, departments, or some other administrative unit within the University. Communities determine their own content guidelines and decide who has access to the community's contributions. An administrator of the UWISpace team works with the head of a community to set up workflows for content to be submitted to the repository. Can each community have its own look? Yes, each community may have a webpage in UWISpace describing its collection. This can be done in HTML and include images. But since UWISpace is not a webhosting service the extent of customization is limited. How do you set up a community in UWISpace? In order to set up a community you can contact the Librarian attached to the Digital Library Services Centre and/or the User Services Librarians at The Main Library to discuss what will be included in the collection. What advantage is there to an author in depositing academic work in a university repository? Academic work available on the internet is read more widely than work published in paper format. Also academic work which is available at little or no cost is read more widely than work published in expensive conventional publications. Depositing academic work in a university repository therefore increases the profile of an author on a world-wide basis, increasing both the dissemination and the impact of the research they undertake.[top] Will I retain copyright of any work that I submit? The author retains copyright to any work submitted to UWISpace. For example a member of faculty can submit pre-prints of articles to UWISpace as an effective mechanism for securing copyright and date-stamping his/her work. However, if the article has been published previously in a journal, permission must be sought from the publisher to archive the document in your institutional repository. Each author signs a license giving UWISpace permission to publish their submitted items on the web. The UWISpace Team of the St. Augustine Campus of The University of the West Indies is willing to review any document that is believed to be an infringement of the Copyright Act. How long does content remain online? UWISpace provides for long term preservation of items. Communities can determine the length of the period that items they submit are visible to their audiences. However the items, while hidden from view, can be stored for perpetuity as the system has mechanisms for backup and preservation built into it. Can I submit any type of content to UWISpace? UWISpace accepts mainly scholarly material, some communities may wish to store raw data used for research on UWISpace as well. Will UWISpace accept all formats? UWISpace can accommodate all digital formats but we prefer to use the use of “open” file or non-proprietary formats. UWISpace administrators are also going by the current standards for file storage in determining the preferred formats. So for example, instead of saving an article in Microsoft Word, use RTF (Rich Text Format) or PDF (Portable Document Format) which is not owned. This approach increases the chances for long term preservation of the document or image. Metadata is descriptive information assigned to an item/resource which assists in the organization and retrieval of the items. In the context of UWISpace users are allowed to assign their own metadata such as author, title, keyword and so on to the resource. UWISpace uses a qualified version of Dublin Core metadata across all content. While each community must submit basic metadata with their items, each record is edited by a member of the UWISpace team at The Main Library for quality control purposes and the maintenance of metadata standards. |
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Withdrawal policy? Items will only be removed from the institutional repository for the following reasons: if there is a copyright infringement. If a contributor leaves The University of the West Indies, the content submitted will remain in the Repository unless a formal request is made to have items withdrawn. Once an item is withdrawn the metadata will remain and the note and date of withdrawal will be inserted. [top] |
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How the UWISpace works Setting up the community
Submit a brief description of the following to the UWI Space:
UWISpace is a service of The Main Library of The University of the West Indies. The Main Library uses UWISpace as a long-term storage system for digital documents. You must be logged in to UWISpace in order to deposit items. See How is UWISpace Organized for information on who can submit works. After you have completed submission, the DLSC at The Main Library will look over the submission to ensure that it appears complete. 1. Go to UWISpace Homepage. |
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Location: Room 224, Main Library, The University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
Phone: (868) 662 2002 X 84243
Email: dlsc@sta.uwi.edu
© The University of the West Indies, 2008