Open archives for Library and Information Science : an international experience . . . 4

Library and information domain being highly integrated with computing science and technology, bibliometric and citational analysis, the team that launched this project felt that LIS could set an interesting reference case to other communities in providing a state-of-the-art model for the OA movement and for digital libraries, and most particularly to the open archive model, within which E-LIS is a disciplinary repository. Furthermore the evolving academic discourse surrounding the concept of Open Access (OA) provided the underlying motivation for the establishment of E-LIS Eprints for Library and Information Science in compliance with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) protocol. Authors who contribute to an e-print archive are participating in a global effort by universities, researchers, libraries, publishers, editors, and readers, to redefine the mechanisms of scholarly communication. E-LIS makes LIS research more visible and accessible, which in turn will increase its status and public value. The trend towards digital libraries and self-archiving is one of the more recent developments in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). The development of an international LIS network is being stimulated by the extension of the OA concept to LIS works and facilitated by the dissemination of material within the LIS community. These are some of the reasons for the success of E-LIS as an organizational model developed within an OAI compliance 1 Antonella de Robbio is the Coordinating Manager of the Library System of the University of Padova, the University Centre for Libraries (CAB). Since 2002 she has been responsible for the Projects Section and Digital Library: digitalization, eprints repositories (Open Access in general), bibliographical services to support e-learning. Until 2002 she was responsible for the Mathematics Library of the University of Padova, where in collaboration with other authors, she developed a set of tools for displaying and connecting classification schemes, applied to the MSC, ZDM, PACS and CCS, as well as to DDC. She is the Italian coordinator of MAI the Italian MetaOpac (since 1999). In 2003 she implemented E-LIS for which she is the Manager. 2 Paula Sequeiros is a researcher with the Institute of Sociology in Porto, Portugal. She was a Documentalist in the banking industry and university librarian director, now dedicates herself to LIS teaching and training. She is an ELIS Editor for Portugal since 2006.