Editor's note: JSTORNEWS asked Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's first Executive Director and President, and currently Chair of the JSTOR Board of Trustees, to provide us with an update about the new not-for-profit organization, Ithaka, where he now serves as President.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to provide a brief introduction to Ithaka, a new not-for-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education around the world. Ithaka has received start-up funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. Our near-term vision is focused on helping organizations like JSTOR and ARTstor work as efficiently and effectively as possible in service of their missions, while also providing resources to help initiate new not-for-profit organizations serving our community.

Background

Information and information dissemination are at the very core of research, teaching, and scholarship. Very few people now doubt that the revolution in rapidly developing information and networking technologies will have a transformative impact on higher education. The questions revolve more around how quickly serious change will take place and which institutions and sectors of the industry will be most affected. Such a dynamic environment presents both challenges and opportunities. Many of these opportunities will be pursued by commercial providers and in fact will become available as commercial products. That is one important path to progress. But many important problems will not be addressed by the commercial sector. These other challenges will have to be taken up by the not-for-profit or government sectors or they will not be addressed at all. Given the fast-moving nature of this environment, we believe there is a need for resources to be directed towards creating entrepreneurially-minded not-for-profit organizations which blend commitment to mission with a parallel commitment to creating sustainable economic models that will support their efforts.

Unlike JSTOR or ARTstor, Ithaka does not intend to have a primary shared "product" or service it has developed and will offer to the community. Instead, Ithaka aims to support other organizations working to deliver products or services at the same time as it works to enhance understanding of the important issues facing our community. In pursuit of this aim, Ithaka incubates a small number of new initiatives internally and provides various forms of support to affiliated organizations with complementary missions. Ithaka's incubation and supporting functions are composed of three areas of activities:

• Providing administrative and technological services that can be shared by incubated entities and affiliated organizations to increase effectiveness, lower costs, and allow these entities to focus on mission-related activities;
• Conducting research to support the cost-recovery goals of affiliated entities, as well as to inform the broader higher education community about the impact of electronic technologies;
• Providing strategic advice and consultation, as well as access to Ithaka's network of relationships in higher education, philanthropy, business, and technology.

Incubated Organizations

The Electronic Archiving Initiative (E-Archive)
Ithaka's first incubated entity, the Electronic Archive Initiative (E-Archive), was born out of the Mellon Foundation's program addressing the preservation of electronic journals and JSTOR's commitment to serve as a long-term archive of journal literature. E-Archive's objective is to build the organizational and technological infrastructure necessary for the long-term preservation of electronic resources, thus ensuring that these materials remain available to future generations of scholars, researchers, and students.

During the past year, Eileen Fenton, E-Archive's Executive Director (and formerly JSTOR's Director of Production) has been meeting with librarians, publishers, and industry experts to understand each group's perspectives, needs, and values. From these meetings she has developed a proposed archiving model that is currently being tested. At the same time, Evan Owens (formerly of University of Chicago Press) and his growing team have been developing the initial technological and production infrastructure to support archiving. This work will continue through the summer of 2004. E-Archive will soon begin ingesting data from publishers for permanent archiving and anticipates deploying a fully functioning archive by the end of 2004.

Working with Ithaka's Research unit, E-Archive has conducted several studies to better understand the ways in which the transition of scholarly journals from print to electronic formats is affecting key stakeholders in the community. E-Archive completed a study comparing the non-subscription costs to libraries associated with receiving and maintaining journal literature in print versus electronic format.¹ In addition, a study of the expected impact on publisher economics associated with the print-to-electronic transition is currently underway.

Aluka
Aluka² has been created with a mission to build and support a sustainable online database of scholarly resources from the developing world, using content vital for research and teaching both in the countries of that region and in the worldwide scholarly community. Beginning with content from Africa, the database will be organized around themes, the first three of which are: Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa, African Plants, and African Cultural Heritage Sites.

During 2003, considerable progress was made in defining Aluka's mission and strategy, recruiting key staff members, identifying local partners, and beginning the critical process of working with advisors to select content for the first set of online collections. By early 2004, work on the first two themes was well underway, with core funding in place and content advisory committees beginning the selection process. By mid-2004 content production on these two clusters will have begun in earnest, while content selection for the third cluster, African Cultural Heritage Sites, will be underway. At the same time, Aluka's technology platform and user interface will begin to take shape, and detailed business plans will be prepared. The preliminary goal is to make the first sets of materials available on a test basis to selected institutions by the end of 2005.

NITLE
NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education) works with three affiliated regional centers (the Center for Educational Technology, the Associated Colleges of the South Technology Center, and the Midwest Instructional Technology Center) to develop collaborative strategies for using new technologies to enhance teaching and learning. Working with small, residential liberal arts campuses, NITLE and the Centers promote the cost effective and pedagogically appropriate adoption of digital materials and tools through faculty and staff development programs, shared resources and materials, and inter-institutional curriculum development. NITLE also provides campus leaders with access to national organizations and expertise in thinking strategically about the implications of digital technologies for small colleges. Information about NITLE and the regional centers is available on the web at: http://www.nitle.org

Summary

In brief, Ithaka supports these incubated entities by providing various administrative and technical services such as accounting and financial administration, human resources, technological support, and software development services. The aim is to provide a set of services to these affiliated entities (including ARTstor and JSTOR) to increase effectiveness, lower costs, and allow the organizations to focus efforts on mission-related activities. Over the past year, Ithaka has built up capacity in each of the shared services areas.

We have made progress, but we are only just beginning. There is so much work to be done. If you would like to read further about Ithaka, you can visit our website at www.ithaka.org or feel free to contact us with questions, comments, or advice.

¹ Roger C. Schonfeld, Donald W. King, Ann Okerson, and Eileen Gifford Fenton. 2004. Library Periodicals Expenses: Comparison of Non-Subscription Costs of Print and Electronic Formats on a Life-Cycle Basis. D-Lib Magazine 10, no. 1. Roger C. Schonfeld, Donald W. King, Ann Okerson, and Eileen Gifford Fenton. Forthcoming 2004. The Non-subscription Side of Periodicals: Changes in Library Operations and Costs between Print and Electronic Formats. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources.

² Aluka is a Zulu word that means "to weave," reflecting Aluka's mission of joining scholarly resources from around the world together in a single place.

Last updated on September 8, 2006