Open-Access Digital Archive

The University of Michigan libraries have released a new digital archive, Deep Blue. Deep Blue aims:

… to provide access to the work that makes Michigan a leader in research, teaching, and creativity. By representing our faculty, staff, and student scholars, as individuals and as members of communities, Deep Blue provides a framework for preserving and finding the best scholarly and artistic work done at the University.

The library is offering its academic research colleagues permanence in the digital environment for research work. They acknowledge something more: by publishing through the University, the scholar’s works gain the weight of a major research institution. They’ve launched with an impressive collection of nearly 24,000 digital works, dating as far back as the 1950s. Access to some materials may be restricted based on the work’s copyright requirements, but much, if not the vast majority, of the collection is available in full text to everyone.
Now what they really need is RSS feeds for their author, topic, and collection lists…. But that will come, I’m sure.

[Via The Chronicle’s Wired Campus Blog.]