Guidelines

Operation

  • The Weizenbaum Library (WL) is the open access repository for interdisciplinary digitalisation research. It is operated by the Weizenbaum Institute (WI) in Berlin.
  • The operation and further development of the Library incorporates recommendations and standardisations from national and international initiatives such as the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI e.V.) and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI).

Collection profile

  • The Weizenbaum Library collects scientific publications from digitalisation research, primarily journal articles, books, contributions to anthologies and conference papers, as well as research data, provided they can be made available under a free licence.
  • It also collects non-textual media (audio, video), such as lecture recordings or academic podcasts. In this way, the WL acknowledges the diversity of possible forms of scientific output as well as the growing relevance of science communication. The evidence-based and quality-assured results of digitalisation research in particular need to be communicated to society.

Cooperations

  • To acquire publications, the Weizenbaum Institute cooperates with the Network of Institutes for Digitalisation Research (NIfD), which also contributes publications to the repository. In this way, open results of digitalisation research are recorded in one place according to library standards, are centrally searchable and preserved in the long term.

Services

  • The Weizenbaum Library makes scientific documents available on the internet for research and teaching in accordance with quality standards. The electronic documents are assigned permanent addresses and are indexed via national and international library catalogues, search engines and other reference tools.
  • Documents in the WL are permanently accessible and can be clearly cited. Each document is assigned a handle to ensure permanent citability.
  • Once published, a document is not subsequently changed or deleted. It is possible to create versions of a document if changes or corrections appear necessary. For older versions, a reference to the respective latest version of the document will then appear.
  • Only in exceptional cases and at the express request of the authors or rights holders, or if there are valid reasons, will the full text be deleted from the database. However, the corresponding metadata will remain accessible to ensure stable linking. A clear, multilingual note will indicate the reasons for the deletion.

Technology and organisation