DRIVER II

DRIVER is a multi-phase effort whose vision and primary objective is to establish a cohesive, pan-European infrastructure of Digital Repositories, offering sophisticated functionality services to both researchers and the general public.
The present proposal (DRIVER-II) aims to introduce key innovations compared to the original DRIVER project, while building on its results.
The main novelties envisioned are:

• Establishment of a European Confederation of Digital Repositories as a strategic arm of DRIVER
• inclusion of Digital Repositories with non-textual or non-publication content, e. g., images, presentations, and possibly primary data
• construction of 'enhanced publications', which combine interrelated information objects into a logical whole, e. g., publications coupled with relevant presentations and associated datasets
• provision of advanced functionality to address the requirements raised by the above innovations and to serve varied modes of scientists' research explorations.

Additionally, DRIVER-II moves from a test-bed to a production-quality infrastructure, expands the geographical coverage of Digital Repositories included in it, intensifies state-of-the-art and future-direction studies, and escalates dissemination, training, and community building activities.
DRIVER-II significantly broadens the horizons of the whole DRIVER endeavour regarding infrastructure operation, functionality innovation, and community relevance, and constitutes a major step on the way to the envisioned Knowledge Society.