Presentation
Building Virtual Communities Around Subject Repositories
Joint Conference on Digital Libraries: Workshop on Disciplinary Repositories
(2011)
Abstract
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has served as a testbed for virtual communities in
subject repositories through its development of InterNano1 and ESENCe (Ethics in Science and
Engineering National Clearinghouse) beta2, two National Science Foundation (NSF) funded
subject repositories that serve science and engineering disciplines.
Both projects serve as virtual communities for emerging disciplines of practice (where an
established online presence has been absent), by integrating social networking components
with existing repository platforms, enhancing the standard model of a subject repository or
subject-based digital library.
InterNano and ESENCe take two different technological approaches to building virtual
communities due to project timelines, budgets, and staffing resources. ESENCe takes a lowinvestment,
hosted approach, while InterNano takes a highly customized, integrated systems
approach. For ESENCe, the repository is the primary platform onto which social components
were integrated; InterNano incorporates the repository into a larger, content management
platform as one of many domain resources.
The challenges of building virtual communities around subject repositories include software
limitations, particularly for commercial platforms; the generation of community awareness, trust,
and participation in subject repository-based virtual communities for emerging disciplines; and
the “moving target” problem of identifying valued content in highly dynamic fields.
This talk will present the two different technical implementations of virtual communities on
subject repositories as demonstrated by ESENCe and InterNano, and the challenges of each.
Disciplines
Publication Date
June 16, 2011
Citation Information
Rebecca C. Reznik-Zellen and Jessica Adamick. "Building Virtual Communities Around Subject Repositories" Joint Conference on Digital Libraries: Workshop on Disciplinary Repositories (2011) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/rebecca_reznik-zellen/14/