Friends: Here is a message posted on the GOAL list by Mr Richard Poynder, the indefatigable commentator on OA developments around the world. Seventeen years ago 25 people gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss ways in which the growing number of e-print servers and digital repositories could be made interoperable. As scholarly archives and repositories had begun to proliferate a number of issues had arisen. There was a concern, for instance, that archives would needlessly replicate each other’s content, and that users would have to learn multiple interfaces in order to use them. What was therefore needed was to develop tools and protocols that would allow repositories to work in concert on a distributed basis. Above all, there was a need to make distributed archives interoperable so that their content could be aggregated into a single searchable virtual archive of (eventually) all published research. The meeting led to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), and to the institutional repository movement. Today there are thousands of institutional repositories around the world. Yet 17 years later the interoperability promised by OAI-PMH has not really materialised, few third-party service providers have emerged to leverage the content in repositories, and duplication has not been avoided. Moreover, to the exasperation of green OA advocates, authors have proved reluctant to take on the task of depositing their papers in these repositories. Some therefore now believe that the institutional repository faces an existential threat. At the very least, they say, it is time to rethink the role and purpose of the institutional repository. These and other matters are discussed in an interview with Clifford Lynch, director of the Washington-based Coalition for Networked Information and one of those who attended the Santa Fe meeting. The Q&A (plus introduction) can be accessed here: http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/q-with-cnis-clifford-l ynch-time-to-re_22.html ----- Arun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658 http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.