Snowed in - so Skype call postponed

With several parts of the country snowed in today and people unable to access their computers, unfortunately we've had to postpone our third Skype conference call from this afternoon. Hopefully there will be a slight thaw this week, so we'll manage to catch up on Wednesday instead. With the Leeds project team meeting in mid January and the Christmas break in between, any further preparations for the two trial-run advocacy presentations due to take place at that project meeting need to be sorted out now.

Lizzie Dipple

Collaborative project team

Being part of this JISC project team has turned out to be very enjoyable and a fantastic learning experience for us all. This is due to the diverse roles of the project team in the different Universities and the professional expertise of Symplectic.

Roles range across the Library, the Central Research Office through to Academic Systems. There is also a range of roles within the library giving the perspectives of the Library Liaison staff through to Electronic Resource staff. Having all these different perspectives helps us all to understand how our own University works and was very helpful when putting together the advocacy plans (where we shared good practice).

It has also proven informative to share the experiences of the partner Universities at different stages of their repository implementation. For example those of us who have never had a repository before can learn from both the successes and mistakes of others further down the line. One key message that the project team have learned is that you can't just raise awareness of the repository once, as a one-off exercise, there has to be continuous promotion. Also the more established repositories can also learn new tricks: for example, colleagues have been very interested how Keele has linked its publications database (and repository) to individual staff webpages. This has encouraged academic colleagues to keep their entries up to date (and deposit), as it instantaneously updates their web page, all from one system!

I'm sure there will be more shared knowledge and experiences next year as we move into the advocacy stage.

Ellie James

Keele University

Meeting with QM Creative Services, 13th December 2010

So, after all our hard work coming up with contextual and content ideas for our advocacy materials, these were dutifully sent off to Queen Mary Creative Services (thanks Lizzie). In a follow up to this, QMCS asked to meet with us to get a clearer idea of what we wanted.

Lizzie and I have therefore spent a very fruitful meeting with members of the design team this afternoon, from which the following has been agreed:

1. The first priority is to design a brand and theme that will be carried across all materials.
2. QMCS will then work on the slide library template ready for the next project meeting on 13th/14th January 2011 (when the first trial-run presentations are to take place).
3. QMCS will also begin developing some of the early design ideas for other materials once the theme and brand have been agreed.

I am providing a demo to Creative Services on Thursday morning (16th December) to give them a better idea about the repository and research publications management systems and how they work, what they are for, etc. This should hopefully help to clarify what we as a project partnership are doing and also tie in with the outlines that we have sent them.

They've also given us things to think about in terms of running our advocacy/communication campaigns. For example, our web presence, which could be providing somewhere quick and easily accessible to get up to date information, not just about the JISC project but about the messages that we are trying to communicate in our advocacy plans. They've also suggested some other mechanisms by which we can give our project a higher profile (for example, year planners on walls are a cheap way to put up information - and have it there all year!) in order to drive users to the project and get the message out more widely.

Whilst we will not be able to do all these things due to time and money constraints, they are useful things to think about for the future, perhaps once we have gone our separate ways. So lots to mull over, and definitely lots of things for me to add to my own shopping list (if I can but find the money). The Head of Creative Services did ask me if I was planning to move in...

Sarah Molloy (QMUL)

Wireframes

Now that we have a set of user stories, as discussed in a previous post, we can look at turning these outline stories into concrete instances which can be presented to users. In order to achieve this, we are employing a technique used in graphic and website design called "wireframing". In this process we decide what materials we would like to produce, and then we layout content in the space with little to no emphasis on how the final product will look. Instead we are simply looking at what information we wish to present, and roughly where on the page we want that content to appear.

We chose two of our user groups to be the focus of advocacy materials: academic authors and senior managers (it is assumed that librarians are mostly already sold on this technology, and don't need the same level of persuasion). For each of these groups we chose a couple of advocacy mediums, thus:

• Academic authors:
  
  
  
  • Postcards; to be handed out at events, available for collection at library front desks, attached to pay cheques, etc.
  
  
  • DL (0.3 A4 size) How-To leaflet; to be handed out at events, available for collection at library front desks, etc. Ideal for pinning next to your computer monitor.
  
  
  • Poster; to be pinned up all over campus
  
  
• Senior managers:
  
  
  
  • Postcards; to be handed out at events, available for collection at library front desks, etc.
  
  
  • A4 product sheet; to be handed out at events, or delivered directly to senior manager's offices
  
  

Below is a screenshot of one of the wireframes in progress, showing the DL size leaflet which contains the How-To for the academic author on depositing their full-text into the digital repository via their CRIS.




Each of these wireframes can then be taken by the project partners and instantiated in their institutional colours, designs, fonts and so forth. This process ensures that the generic project outputs are appropriate for all institutions undertaking a CRIS to Repository link, irrespective of their software solution, and also does not enforce any kind of branding upon the adopting institution.

- Richard Jones, Symplectic Ltd

Notes from second project team Skype call on 25th Nov 2010

In our inaugural Skype project team RePosit conference call we agreed that we wanted to have a full-on discussion of the various advocacy plans, and so we organised a second Skype call for Thursday 25th November. It was another successful call which ended up lasting about 1¾ hours.

Skype call meeting minutes 25th Nov 2010

Basically we looked at each draft advocacy plan in detail, and found there were a number of recurrent themes. The plans naturally need to be made up of two halves: the overall strategy and then the detail of who/when/what you want to do. Working out that detail gives you a timeline to work against and makes you aware of lead times, for instance for high-level meeting agendas or inclusion in existing training materials. Some partner HEI plans already contained both sections, in other plans we need to flesh out one or the other part more. Another key element of the plans is the background context. Since the plans will act as exemplars of advocacy planning in the pack of project outputs, it is important that any other HEI looking them up can immediately see which situations are most relevant to them.

Some key points that came up for discussion included that planned success criteria must be measurable (SMART). Having subject librarians on board can help not only with dissemination of the message to the academics, but also to get feedback on how awareness is hopefully growing. In fact, having a project team made up of representatives from key stakeholders (librarians, research office, academics and IT) is the best approach. A long-standing repository system is not the same thing as an embedded one, so you have to keep going with continual advocacy. When content is made public, such as on personal web pages, people are much keener to make sure that data is correct and up to date.

Overall, though, something that we all found was that working together like this - sharing different perspectives, different experiences and so on across the varied members of the RePosit project team - is an absolutely fantastic benefit of being involved in the project.

We will have one more conference call before Christmas to work out some of the details for our next project meeting, which takes place in Leeds in mid January.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

User Stories

In a previous post we discussed the fact that there are many reasons why someone might care about a link existing between their CRIS and their Digital Repository. We identified upwards of 20 such reasons, and alluded to the fact that each of these reasons resonates more with some people than it does with others, and emphasises more the CRIS or the Repository.

In this post we're going to have a look at some concrete examples of the user stories that we have developed from the "Whys", to give you a flavour of what the project outputs will contain.

A story for academic authors: how can this help me raise my research profile?

CRIS and Digital Repository integration is all about raising your research profile. This happens by enhancing your research's visibility through your digital repository and increasing your potential for being cited. This is not only in the public interest - the people who ultimately funded your work - but it also increases how easy it is to find and read your work, and therefore also increases its re-usability. By ensuring that your research information and full-text content is available, it will be easier for your institution to assemble high-quality REF returns, while also making it easy for you to meet your funder mandates on open access deposit. As an additional advantage, your research will be cared for and preserved for future readers. As a result your research presence is significant, and remains so for longer.


A story for librarians: using research information management to drive institutional strategy

Shrinking library budgets mean that it is important to find cost-effective solutions to support your institution's strategy, and to participate in the global research economy. By providing public access to publicly funded research through your Digital Repository, you are provisioning for long-term storage and preservation across time and software advances of institutional assets, which are valuable in this economy. This benefits the institution's standing by increasing the amount of research content which can be made available through the repository, the CRIS and any other systems which build institutional web-presence from the information held there.


A story for senior staff: increasing citations in support of the REF

Increasing the visibility of your research is going to be extremely important in the next round of metrics-based research evaluation. You can increase the visibility of your research by improving its online discoverability. This is not just in the public interest (although it is), but will provide you with the opportunity to raise your institution's profile in areas such as HE rankings, and Student Surveys. Ultimately, this increased discoverability and visibility increases the opportunity for citations to your researcher's work, which will support a high quality REF return.


There are a number of other stories that we are working on, and as you can see from the above we are still in the early period of refining them into something which can be clearly presented. In time we will develop and make available advocacy material wireframes and slide-decks in support of these stories, and we will shortly be publishing blog posts on those topics.

- Richard Jones, Symplectic Ltd.

What can we learn from Prof Weasel and Kooey the Goose: project chat with Gareth Johnson

In our Exeter project meeting, we discussed different ways of promoting a CRIS (or choose your preferred term!) to repository link. Readers may be familiar with the (in)famous library education video series created by Gareth Johnson (University of Leicester aka llordllama). In particular, “The Professional Librarian’s Guide to Understanding Academic Copyright” is well known and has been used in repository training sessions – I’ve used it on occasion (with permission!) as an icebreaker and a painless way of explaining the consequences of academic authors’ tendency to sign away rights to their work. Would this type of video be a useful advocacy or educational tool in the CRIS to Repository context?

Although a lot of our advocacy work will be focussed on our home institutions, communicating RePosit findings to the wider repository and library community is very important – particularly to maximise awareness of the training materials produced during the project. We will want to explore the pros and cons of the emerging deposit method and hope to facilitate a community of practice around the new CRIS/repository model.

I had a very helpful discussion with Gareth around a couple of key issues (i) whether videos in this field were feasible and what form they might take (ii) community building.

(i) of course, whether Gareth produces videos in this area is very much his call. Having produced many videos, he’s learned that it can pay to focus a video on one main issue or message e.g. “what is a CRIS?”. So a possibly approach would be a series of videos from which to pick and mix according to the specific requirements of a training session. This could fit very well with the emerging RePosit approach of a slide bank from which “stories” can be pulled together to appeal to a specific audience. From us (RePosit – or anyone else promoting this type of deposit model), Gareth would like any specific quotations or opinions from researchers, librarians, administrators which could be used to inform any videos he puts together. As Gareth says, it’s useful for the videos to provide food for thought and look at a topic from several angles.

(A useful tip from Gareth: why not email all your keen depositors and ask them to provide an attributable quote for use in promotion – this can yield surprisingly rich results.)

(ii) Perhaps we could offer the emerging “community” multiple options/ discussion venues and see where the traffic goes? So if the RePosit Google Group doesn’t take off, maybe try a Facebook page – this may be more user friendly. Are there any established groups we could piggy back on?

“The Professional Librarian’s Guide to Understanding Academic Copyright”