Thought leaders and practitioners from higher education and beyond called on participants at the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting in Baltimore on November 17-18 to continue their digital repository development efforts and offered strategies for building on experience gained to date.

In the opening keynote, John Wilbanks, who heads the Science Commons project at Creative Commons, pointed to the unique qualities of digital repositories, and the need to highlight their potential to serve the academic community. He encouraged universities to adopt open-access policies modeled after the one adopted by Harvard University earlier this year rather than inventing their own.

Bob Witeck, chief executive officer and founding partner of Witeck-Combs Communications Inc., pointed to the importance of smart marketing in getting digital repositories off the ground and valued by faculty. He encouraged librarians and repository managers to use plain language and vivid stories to communicate the impact of the open sharing of information. By making digital repositories more visible and demonstrating their value to the public, universities can win needed support from taxpayers and communities, said David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), in the closing keynote of the meeting.

A summary of each keynote and every panel discussion, along with available podcasts, slides, and an invitation to online discussion, are now available online through the SPARC website at http://www.arl.org/sparc/ir08.