[EP-underground] Kudos to Tim Brody for his cross-archive registry and growth-metre!

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004 Eric Van de Velde <[email protected]> wrote:

> I absolutely love
> http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php! 
> I think this shows what really matters: content! 
> I would suggest a few additions to make the website
> complete and then use it for some good PR:
>
> 	- A federated search interface

Dear Eric,

All credit goes to Tim Brody (to whom I am branching your reply)!

I'm not sure what a federated interface is. (I assume it's one that accepts all
pertinent OAI archives, and in some integrated way? Tim will understand, and, I
hope, do it if he can.)

> 	- Content statistics (graph number of items over time)

There is already an analysis across archives:
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=analysis

but I agree that eprints itself should have a way of doing the same
*within* each archive across time: (Chris? Tim?)

> 	- Usage statistics (I guess the individual repositories would have
> to contribute that)

In principle, an OAIster cross-archive version of Tim's existing citebase,
which counts downloads as well as citations could provide that. Again,
it would hep if the eprints software were adapted to make this easily done
(Chris? Tim?)
http://citebase.eprints.org/
http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php

> Ideally, all of this would be made available for:
> 		1. All OAI repositories
> 		2. All Eprints repositories
> 		3. Each collection of Eprints repositories belonging to a
> separate institution.

Yes, yes, and yes!

> In fact, such a website could be the launch of an Eprints coalition of
> institutes.

And yes again!

Best wishes, Stevan

> With kind greetings,
> --Eric.

Eric Van de Velde
Library Director
California Institute of Technology