German Initiative for Networked Information (DINI)
To keep pace with rapidly changing information and communication technologies, universities and other research institutions are obliged to transform their information infrastructures. Change management is therefore a major issue in the German university sector and it requires more consultation, cooperation and standards than ever before. The German Initiative for Networked Information (DINI) was set up to coordinate and support these efforts. Working on a regional and national level, DINI's aim is to promote the improvement of information and communication services and the development of the requisite information infrastructures at universities and scholarly societies. By working together and sharing the tasks in hand, institutions can improve the quality and range of their services. In addition, joint standards and recommendations are called for. In October 2008 DINI issued 10 propositions regarding the information and communication infrastructure of the future.
DINI Certification
By building document and publication servers at universities, research organisations and scholarly societies, the scholarly output of the respective institutions can be made openly accessible webwide and stored on a long-term basis. This contributes significantly to the spread of online dissemination as a new means of scholarly communication. Document and publication servers are therefore a synonym for a service which, by necessity, involves not only hardware and software but also people, organisations and processes.
DINI – the German Initiative for Networked Information – supports these developments, and aims to bring about an improvement in scholarly communication both nationally and internationally. Hence, infrastructural development must take place in accordance with international standards and on a sound technological basis.
DINI certification pursues three main aims:
- to provide a detailed description of the demands on a document and publication server as a service which facilitates the dissemination of scholarly contributions and which involves technology, organisation and processes;
- to pinpoint desirable ways in which this service can be further developed from a technical and organisational point of view;
- to provide users and operators with documentary evidence of a repository's compliance with standards and recommendations.
With the award of a DINI certificate it is possible for the first time to attest to the fact that repositories meet well-defined standards of quality.
