MIT and HP this week unveiled a digital library project called DSpace. The system is designed to be a manageable repository for research material, such as conference papers, technical reports, and other kinds of media.

“Preserving data in an accessible manner is increasingly becoming a problem for a number of universities and government agencies. MIT itself produces an estimated 10,000 pieces of digital content a year, a figure that includes conference papers and technical reports,” says the News.com report.

Among other goodies in this library are electronic texts of out-of-print books from MIT Press. Nice of them to put this content online — that’s a gesture towards openness that other publishers might do well to emulate.

Here’s a link to the DSpace home page (which, oddly, uses an SSL connection).