E-LIS is an acronym for Eprints in Library and Information Science. It is an international open archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the library and information science. It is accessible to anyone with Internet access at http://eprints.rclis.org
Background
E-LIS is the first international e-server, in this subject area and resulted from the RCLIS (Research in Computing, Library and Information Science) project and the DoIS (Documents in Information Science), promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and hosted by AEPIC team on machines of the Italian Consorzio Interuniversitario Lombardo per Elaborazione Automatica (CILEA). It is a non-commercial repository. There is neither funding nor interest in profiting from the initiative.
E-LIS was originally founded by Jose’Manuel Barrueco, Antonella De Robbio, Thomas Krichel and Imma Subirats Coll and started in 2003. E-LIS relies on the voluntary work of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds. Currently, there are 64 editors from 42 countries across the world. The regional editor for Africa is Fatima Darries, who is also the country editor for
The quality of the metadata of the submission is controlled by country editors.
Why a repository for Librarians
The purpose of the E-LIS archive is to make full texts documents visible, accessible, harvestable, searchable and useable by any potential user with access to the Internet. Librarians can search and archive their own publications and presentations in E-LIS free of charge.
E-LIS puts at the disposal of the LIS community not only metadata, but also full text documents which are freely accessible and retrievable using the full potential of the Internet.
E-LIS is for librarians. It is librarians who use it. By working practically in the field within the framework of Open Digital Libraries, it improves the knowledge of the building and management of open archives amongst librarians. It provides a platform for librarians to test and see how an open archive works and what its capabilities are.
Not only does it promote open archives in various disciplinary environments, but also create a valid and credible model in our own discipline for the building of a world LIS archive. E-LIS promotes self-archiving in LIS (not only in E-LIS) and offer an open archive to authors without acces to an institutional repository. For those who do have an institutional repository it offers the added advantage of an archive that is discipline specific to LIS. Archiving in a global discipline specific repository increases the visibility for authors in the international sphere of LIS>
E-LIS allows for the establish of a base for communal work between librarians information technology professionals, and to enhance the Open Access movement
In addition to traditional Library Science subjects, E-LIS also includes all technical and applied disciplines relating to the Librarianship and Information Science world
Most arguments regarding the building of digital libraries, tools and scope, electronic publishing items, techniques and methodologies from metadata description to preservation, archiving to copyright, have place into E-LIS.
The repository now boasts almost 8000 eprints (research, articles and presentations) in the E-LIS archive! It makes it significantly large resource to search for information from across the world on LIS. You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for alerts on new submission to E-LIS.
Author rights and responsibilites
LIS researchers, librarians, students and research institutions are invited to search (it’s free!), and participate by depositing their own work.
Articles, presentations and papers can be in any language (abstracts and keywords in English). Preferred formats are .pdf and .html, as these are best suited for later retrieval.
Statistical information regarding viewing and downloading is provided.
All works deposited in the E-LIS server remain the property of the author. Authors who submit work are responsible for the documents they archive. Authors have to ensure that the intellectual property of their deposited work is theirs and that no restrictions exist for digital distribution of the deposited work.
Fatima Darries can be reached at Darriesf at yahoo.com and Wynand can be reached at WynandvdWalt at gmail.com.
published in LIASA in Touch 10(1)
