Digital Repository of Scientific Institutes

The Central Library of Geography and Environmental Protection of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences took part in the Project of development Digital Repository of Scientific Institutes RCIN, with one of which sub-bases being the IGiPZ PAN Digital Repository. The project was envisaged to be carried out in the years 2010-2014, and its financing was provided by the funds of the European Fund of Regional Development under the framework of Operational Programme – Innovative Economy, Priority Ax 2. Investment projects relating to development of information infrastructure of science within the 2.3.2 sub-action – The Projects in the area of development of information resources of science in a digital form.

The project aims to develop the Repository of digitized, full-text, free to the general public, scientific publications, which are multidisciplinary in character, and available in easily searchable formats. The detailed goals of the project are as follows:

• to modernize and consolidate the science-research and IT infrastructure of 16 scientific institutes;
• to increase digital resources/content of the Internet with valuable scientific/research works published by the members of the Consortium;
• to preserve for future generations the current scientific publication output through development of a digital Archive of the Consortium Institutes;
• to extend the circle of recipients of Polish digital content;
• to promote Polish science, history, culture and highly-valuable assets of natural environment as well as of the Polish literary cultural heritage in the world through dissemination of the RCIN resources by integrating them with the EU digital library network Europeana;
• to provide further support to education, including distance education/learning;
• to offer support for the young research/academic personnel by providing employment possibilities to university graduates.

To effectively perform the Project, it has been necessary to further improve the IT and technological infrastructure of the Consortium members to such an extent as to allow them to jointly/cooperatively utilize the one database, housed on a common server operating in one of the Consortium Institutes. A number of digitalization laboratories have been established, with specialist equipment – scanners (including Bookeye large-scale format scanners that make it possible to scan antique materials), serving the needs of all the members of the Consortium, as well as making it possible to open highly professional digital Archives of the Institutes. To this end, a group of people have been employed and trained, including scanning specialist and editors of digital publications, as well creating a monitoring system controlling the progress of work and  effectiveness and accurateness of the implemented procedures. The project was carried out in Warsaw, Cracow and Białowieża.

The establishment of Digital Repository RCIN was triggered by an assumption that dissemination and popularization of science digital resources is of key importance, especially across educational and scientific circles. Development of Digital Repository RCIN fills in the gap – i.e., the lack of resources of Scientific Institutes in the currently available Polish digital library network on the Internet. The institutes forming the Consortium are dealing with scientific disciplines that are stated, to a larger extent, as a high priority in the state scientific policy, i.e., mathematical, technical, natural and medical sciences. In the Digital Repository RCIN, also humanities and social sciences are represented. The RCIN should play a significant part in enhancing access to information, specialist knowledge, as well as in popularization of Polish science.