Document servers

The operation of document servers for the purpose of the provision and long-term securing of scholarly open-access publications forms part of the central services of a modern research library. In addition to institutionally defined repositories operated by universities and other research institutions in order to document the scholarly output of their researchers, document servers defined through subjects are becoming increasingly important, which serve for collecting scholarly publications of high quality involving multiple institutions. In such subject-related repositories, considerably larger amounts of publications can be made accessible in principle than is the case in institutional repositories.

In the Center for Electronic Publishing, the activities of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek with regard to the set-up of several subject-defined document servers is pooled and coordinated in close cooperation with the Information Technology Division and the Munich Digitization Center. Currently, a new technical basis is created for operating document servers in the following subject areas:

• Musicology
• Eastern-, Eastern Central and South-Eastern Europe
• Historical science

In all cases the set-up and expansion of the document servers takes place in close cooperation with the respective scholarly disciplines and in the context of specialised information services established at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The services still under construction will have the typical properties of document servers and ensure a high visibility of the contents in search engines, a stable link-up via persistent identifiers, subject-specific cataloguing in accordance with proven guidelines and standards, as well as sustainable storage in long-term archives.