The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) celebrated the official opening of the DARE-depot on the 28th of November 2006. This digital depot is the place where the academic output from the Dutch DARE repositories (Digital Academic REpository) is durably stored and accessible. These repositories were set up with the assistance of the SURF Foundation and contain among other things, the collected publications of top Dutch academics, the ‘Cream of Science’ and doctoral e-theses from Dutch universities, the ‘Promise of Science’ .
DARE may be accessed through KB’s Digital Library. Click on ‘Full-text’ in the column on the left to see the option to search the database. In collaboration with the SURF foundation and the Dutch universities the KB has taken the initiative in establishing a facility to guarantee durable access at a national level to the objects in the digital academic repositories. The academic and scientific inheritance of the Netherlands is not only durably stored but also durably accessible for future researchers; this is something that one can’t always take for granted in view of the rapid developments in the field of ICT. In 10 or 20 years time we would like to digitally access the publications that are being written today.
As the national library of the Netherlands, the KB is responsible for the durable storage of, and access to, all publications published in the Netherlands. In order to also ensure the preservation of increasing numbers of electronic publications the E-depot has been developed; the first durable archiving system in the world! The E-depot already contains journal articles published by Dutch and international academic publishers. The material in the digital academic repositories forms a worthy addition to this. This material may be accessed through the KB’s Digital Library and through the search interfaces of the various institutional repositories as well as through the joint portal to the repositories, DAREnet (www.darenet.nl), Google Scholar and other search engines.
The SURF Foundation and the KB are both front runners in the race to make academic output available in a durable manner. Knowledge exchange is taking place in various (inter)national networks and new services are being developed for digital academic repositories and the E-depot.
For more information please contact Mirella van der Velde (KB), 070-3140958, or Leo Waaijers (SURF Foundation), 030-2346600