Community & Collection Policies (DRAFT)

The VU e-Archive repository is a partnership between Vanderbilt communities, Vanderbilt Libraries and Vanderbilt administration. VU e-Archive content consists of collections produced by Vanderbilt communities, which are managed, preserved and distributed by Vanderbilt Libraries through VU e-Archive. Some of the collections will be subject to institutional guidelines defined by Vanderbilt administration. As in all partnerships, it is important that all VU e-Archive stakeholders understand and agree to the policies, guidelines and procedures required to build a VU e-Archive repository. The following policy statements have been developed with input from various parties.

What is a VU e-Archive Community?

A VU e-Archive "Community" is a self-constituting group at Vanderbilt that produces research, has a defined scope, has long-term stability, and can assume responsibility for setting community policies. Each community assigns a coordinator to work with Vanderbilt Libraries staff.

The VU e-Archive need not mirror the existing University organizational structure. It would be surprising if groups with common interests followed these lines very closely. User communities should both be created exogenously and allowed to arise endogenously.

A user community should be any group that:
(1) Includes at least some members associated with the University;
(2) Produces secondary materials likely to be of some general interest to users in the future;
(3) Produces materials that serve some University mission (research, teaching, administration, etc).

Any faculty member (including non-tenure track and visiting faculty), and any representative of any administrative or other academic organizational unit on campus should be allowed to propose a VU e-Archive community.

Groups wishing to establish a VU e-Archive community that does not conform to this definition will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Individual faculty members may submit items through an established community in the VU e-Archive project.

Note that this definition allows groups based at Vanderbilt that include members from other universities (for example groups of researchers at different universities working on a common project, or scholarly societies.)

What responsibilities does a VU e-Archive Community take on?

A VU e-Archive Community agrees to:
(1) Submit and describe content;
(2) Define community membership and collection policies for its members;
(3) Notify the libraries of organizational changes that affect submissions;
(4) Reply to a request for annual reconfirmation of Community information;
(5) Understand and observe University policies relevant to VU e-Archive and educate Community submitters regarding these policies;
(6) Clear copyright for items submitted when the copyright owner is other than the author(s) or Vanderbilt;
(7) Decide upon a submission workflow for each collection.

What rights does a VU e-Archive Community retain?

A VU e-Archive Community retains the right to:
(1) Establish policy regarding content to be submitted, within the VU e-Archive guidelines;
(2) Decide who may submit content within the Community;
(3) Determine access to content at the item level either to Vanderbilt only, or unrestricted;
(4) Receive a copy of submitted material on request;
(5) Remove items and collections in accordance with the "Withdrawal Policy", below;
(6) Approve addition of or elimination of sub-communities;
(7) Customize interfaces to Community content at the institutional repository level.

Once a community with a general purpose has been established following guidelines described above and a leader chosen, the university should largely withdraw from direct supervision. The community should express its own preference for review and certification standards and for how widely access should be granted. One can envision an array of appropriate practices depending on the purpose of the community and as much as practical, the university should facilitate the choices made by the community.

What is the Role of the Vanderbilt Libraries?

The major roles of the Vanderbilt Libraries with respect to the VU e-Archive are as follows:
(1) Seek out and set up new VU e-Archive communities.
(2) Determine if newly proposed user communities satisfy the criteria given above and authorize those that do.
(3) Run and maintain the system.
(4) Adjudicate internal and external conflicts concerning archived material and identity of community leaders when required.
(5) Assure the continuation of key communities, especially by verifying the existence of a community leader.
(6) Maintain a loose oversight to ensure that the materials that communities archive are at least grossly in compliance with the collection criteria.

The Library will provide guidance for the compatibility of the formats used with the approved formats that are supported by the Institutional Repository at Vanderbilt for long-term storage. The Library will provide the resources and technologies necessary to migrate and update the files stored here. The Library will assure the preservation of the files for unlimited time. The Library will issue a list of formats that it will support. This list must be updated as the technology changes or evolves.

Withdrawal of Items from VU e-Archive

Vanderbilt Libraries foresee times when it may be necessary to remove items from the repository. It has been decided that under some circumstances items will be removed from view, but to avoid loss of the historical record, all such transactions will be traced in the form of a note in the <Description.provenance> field of the record for the item. The content of the note should be one of the following:

"removed from view at request of the author"
"removed from view at Vanderbilt's discretion"
"removed from view at Vanderbilt Libraries' discretion"
"removed from view by legal order"

Since any VU e-Archive item that has existed at some time may have been cited, we will always supply a "tombstone" when the item is requested, which will include the original metadata (for verification) plus one of the above withdrawal statements in place of the link to the object. The metadata should be visible, but not searchable. These items will also be made unavailable for metadata harvesting.