ARMA presentation

Doesn't time fly! It was a few weeks ago since I presented at the ARMA conference (Association of Research Managers and Administrators), here is my Prezi http://prezi.com/xhxhicyxmo-z/the-repository-rollercoaster/

We had some fantastic discussion about the issues around repositories, with colleagues in the audience at different stages.

Ellie James
Keele University

Digital preservation and self deposit

Advocacy and outreach surrounding RePosit will hopefully increase deposits through the connectors. The exact numbers and scale is YTD but what we do know for certain is that user generated files bring digital preservation and long-term access issues with them. While a vast majority of the files will be ok, can we be certain all the files are healthy and reusable for the future? How do we automate file verification to free up repository staff time and resources? All very exciting questions, challenges and issues surrounding increased deposits both from external users and content creating internally.

The AQuA project is investigating these issues and more:

AQuA project, a JISC funded collaboration between: University of Leeds, University of York, British Library, and Open Planets Foundation will have project outputs that can be implemented in repositories to assist with the growing list of file issues.

Future postings on how the tools can assist repositories will be posted after the 3 day London event 13-15 May 2011. Outcomes from the Leeds AQuA Event held in April are on the AQuA wiki.

posted by Jodie Double

Forthcoming project team meeting and report deadline extension

Although we've had a number of Skype calls and informal meet-ups at other events, it's been five months since our last full project meeting - held in Leeds in January. So this week we have our fourth project team meeting, taking place on Thursday 16th June in London. As well as reviewing progress so far, and hopefully resolving any final niggling issues, the two major topics we'll be discussing are: what to put together for our part of the RSP dissemination event and how we want to put together our final project report - once all the findings are in.

Our revised project report deadline is 20th October 2011. Unfortunately, after further delays to the implementations of Repository Tools at Plymouth and Exeter - compounded by the departure of Richard Jones from Symplectic - in discussion with our JISC programme manager, an extension to the deadline for submitting the final project report was agreed to allow extra time so that the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth could also run training and advocacy activities as per their published plans (Exeter and Plymouth). Of course, this extension basically runs through the summer vacation, so there will be different types of opportunities (and possibly fewer of them) to talk to academics compared to term time - something that has to be worked around.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

EPSRC mandate - working closely with Research Office staff

Research Office staff can play an important role in publicising repository deposit. The relationship between repository staff and research support staff is a key one which should be nurtured. It's great that we have direct research support representation on the RePosit team (Ellie from Keele) as this brings an important different perspective to our work - but also provides a good route to information which may naturally come the way of the Research Office but may or may not make it as far as the Library. The recent EPSRC mandate is a good example. The EPSRC open access policy is not new, but it has been revised recently. There is a prominent and imminent date on the policy which has made institutions sit up and take notice (true of EPSRC's open access publication policy and their data management policy). There's some interesting psychology in that. In addition, the EPSRC has written to all University VCs to publicise their policy.

From a deposit/RePosit point of view at the University of Leeds, the Research Office has take the opportunity to publicise the EPSRC policy on the staff intranet and in a direct email to all EPSRC grant holders. We (repository staff) were able to confirm deposit via Symplectic meets the green route requirements and we provided relevant text for the email to grant holders. Because the EPSRC policy is flexible and allows recipients to choose whether to comply via the gold route or green self-archiving route, we can gave a straightforward message to grant hodlers. Yes, deposit into White Rose Research Online meets your funder requirements. There is no cost to you . Here's how you do it. The EPSRC email provided a great way to reach academics directly and show our relevance to them - and to work closely with our Research Office. Whether it will have a significant impact on deposit - we'll see!

Kultivate Metadata Workshop

While many of the members from the project team were at the Symplectic User Conference at the end of May a couple of weeks ago, I was across town at the Kultivate Project Metadata Workshop giving a talk on issues surrounding non-text and practice-led research outputs.

What is a Kultivate workshop?

Kultivate workshops bring together repository managers and other key stakeholders interested in creative and visual arts research discussing specific topics. Previous topics have consisted of advocacy at the February event and March centered around archiving and curation. Attendees are always very engaged, generously sharing experiences and ideas that you can take back and immediately implement in your institution.

Ironically, I heard through the grapevine that arts deposit came up at the Symplectic Conference the very same day Kultivate was meeting. Arts research being talked about in the broader context of research outputs, makes me very happy and illustrates Kultivate's timeliness in addition to how repositories have grown beyond journal articles and book chapters.

How does this relate to the RePosit Project?

It relates in many ways as repositories will be dealing with all types of content at some point if not already, especially in the planning and build up to the REF. Practice led research (art, design, performance etc...) represents vast quantities of research outputs that have traditionally been curated within departments or were out of scope for the publications database. This is one more area for repositories managers to keep an eye on and plan for future expansion of services and tools.

posted by Jodie Double, on the train back to Leeds after a very productive RePosit project meeting today

The Repository Rollercoaster

I'll be at the ARMA conference in Glasgow next week and on the Wednesday morning at 11am I'll be doing my session on 'The Repository Rollercoaster'. The 'prezi' will take the audience on a journey through my repository experience, including some of the advocacy work, and my partipication in this JISC project.

I will post the link to the presentation here afterwards, and also post the discussions.

Ellie James
Keele University