Sunday, May 22, 2005

DAREnet

DAREnet: "DAREnet was launched in January 2004. Intentionally to demonstrate the network of the local collections of digital documentation held by all the Dutch universities and several related institutions, presenting them to the user in a consistent form. This also makes it possible to search one or more of the repositories concerned. DAREnet is unique. No other nation in the world offers such easy access to its complete academic research output in digital form.

After one year DAREnet served more than its purpose to demonstrate the network. It also shows the usefulness of repositories, permanent storage and open access. Since the start of 2005 a more stable and permanent DAREnet is being set up.

DAREnet harvests all digital available material from the local repositories, making it searchable. But it limits the harvest to those objects that are full content available to everyone. Tollgated objects (e.g. publications at publishers who only allow access through expensive licenses) can only be found in the local repository.

This means that the content of all repositories in the Netherlands adds up to more than the content that can be found in DAREnet. However, DAREnet guarantees free and open access to all content for everyone. No restrictions.

At the beginning of 2005, DAREnet provided access to 47,000 digital data and objects at sixteen institutions."

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