ARROW is a national demonstrator project funded by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training, under the Research Information Infrastructure Framework for Australian Higher Education for the support of digital repositories

Digital library

A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...

 of Australian content.

The ARROW project will identify and test a software solution or solutions to support best practice institutional digital repositories comprising e-prints, digital theses

Thesis

A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...

 and electronic publishing

Electronic publishing

Electronic publishing or ePublishing includes the digital publication of e-books and electronic articles, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. Electronic publishing has become common in scientific publishing where it has been argued that peer-reviewed scientific journals are in...

. A wide range of digital content types will be managed in these repositories. The National Library of Australia will develop a repository and associated metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

 to support independent scholars (those not associated with institutions). A complementary activity of ARROW is the development and testing of national resource discovery services (developed by the National Library), using metadata harvested from the institutional repositories, and the exposing of metadata to provide services via protocols and toolkits.

This will include a potential path for the redevelopment of the Australian Digital Theses Program metadata repository incorporated into the National Library’s national resource discovery services. Initially ARROW will be tested in four consortium partner institutions, prior to it being offered more widely across the higher-education sector. Consortium members are:

• Monash University
  Monash University
  Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
  
   (lead institution)
• National Library of Australia
  National Library of Australia
  The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
  
  
• University of New South Wales
  University of New South Wales
  The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
  
  
• Swinburne University of Technology
  Swinburne University of Technology
  Swinburne University of Technology is an Australian public dual sector university based in Melbourne, Victoria. The institution was founded by the Honourable George Swinburne in 1908 and achieved university status in June 1992...
  
  

The solution will be open standards-based, or will support open standards, and will facilitate interoperability within and between participating institutions.

External links

• ARROW project web site
• Australian Research Online (formerly ARROW Discovery Service)