Biblioteca d'Alessandria: a new technical and business model for Open Repositories creating software

The Biblioteca d'Alessandria project, born and developed within ENEA (Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l'Energia e l'Ambiente) and CNR (Consiglio Nazionale per le Ricerche), is based on the idea of applying a peer to peer network to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. The system created allows to build OAI-PMH compliant Open Repositories of any size, from the single-researcher self-archived and self-managed shelf to the Institutional Repository of a big University, structured with groups and areas of internal sharing with administrators allowed to manage external and OAI visibility. The project encompasses four different products, each one targeted at different users: the researchers, small (such single university departments) and large research institutions, small and medium publishers, general companies. The focus of all products is on installation, use and maintenance simplicity, richness of value-adding services, economical affordability and use of effective marketing strategies in order to reach the maximum diffusion of the system. The major achievement in those issues is a software that can be installed in a simple pc in few minutes by any non-specialised, non-tutored person, and that can then be managed by "normal", technically unlearned people, as for any common pc software. The time needed to configurate the system and actually create the archive depends on the complexity of the archive, and can vary from a few minutes to some hours. A detailed and quite innovating business model is being applied to the products, with the aim of sustaining and propelling the project by business revenues. A careful study of juridical issues has been (and is being) made, and the project of a compelling DRM system has been made. In this paper, the principal elements of the projects are presented, along with the main actual achievements and their further evolution.