The Chronicle of Higher Education: 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output. Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work. The idea is to gather as much of the intellectual output of an institution as possible in an easy-to-search online collection. [Tomalak's Realm]

» Interesting article.  Here's a taster:

Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work.

Some imagine a day when every research university gives its research away through the Web, allowing scholars and nonacademics to mine it for ideas and information.

Institutional repositories could create an alternative to journals, fans of the archives say.

Journal publishers, meanwhile, say that such repositories are unlikely to supplant their publications.

Journals, they argue, are still the best means of distributing and preserving research.

And even some of those supporting the new archives recognize the difficulty of getting professors to change their habits.

"We've had pretty serious interest in the system from about 30 major institutions," Ms.

What: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's project to develop a superarchive, as well as software tools for creating and maintaining the repository.

The tools will be offered to other colleges that want to use them.

When: DSpace has been under development for two years.

The university is testing it this summer, and plans to make the software available free to anyone in the fall, when the university will invite all professors at MIT to contribute to its archive.

What: Free software developed at the University of Southampton, in Britain, to help individual scholars, departments, or universities create archives of research papers online.

An updated version was released this year.

What: A series of "metadata" codes that librarians or others can attach to research papers to help search engines pull out desired information.

Universities are funded out of taxation.  The fruits of their research should be made available to all, for the benefit of all.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, an infectious disease expert noted for her work against AIDS and anthrax, will be the next director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By Warren E. Leary. [New York Times: Health]

You Snooze You Win, Learning Study Reveals [Scientific American]
You Snooze You Win, Learning Study Reveals

Work-aholics take note: new research indicates that morning sleep and afternoon naps aid mental and physical learning. Scientists have known for some time that sleep can improve the brain[base ']s acquisition of new facts and skills, but its effect on previously learned knowledge was not known. To that end, two studies published this month in the journals Neuron and Nature Neuroscience suggest that snoozing can reverse "burnout" from information overload and improve motor skill development.