2nd Project team meeting minutes

Herewith the full minutes from the second RePosit project team meeting, held on Monday 13th September at the University of Exeter. We had a lot to cover and it was quite an intense session, so there is plenty to read about.

In brief:
After a quick project progress update, we did an in-depth review of the lessons our project could learn from reading documentation on the various JISC projects that had done work in similar or related areas (individual review resumes are posted in this blog tagged with #Literature review). These lessons included: tailor/target advocacy, demonstrate usability, combined advocacy (one 'team' message), don't use jargon, embed in the work life-cycle, continual reminders and in as many ways as possible, be aware of cultural differences/barriers.

We spent some time working out how to approach advocacy strategies, whether via the message itself (key benefits), which audience it would be aimed at (e.g. senior managers, librarians, academics - all of whom might be engaged or not), how it would be delivered (e.g. passive info, one-to-ones, training sessions), and decided that each HEI being at a different stage would need to pull together these different strands in different ways to produce different strategies, such as blanket awareness-raising, using champions or targeting early career academics. Having outlined the grid of possibilities, we fleshed out some key sample strategies for an institution just starting out with a brand-new repository, such as Keele's situation. The content of advocacy materials really relates to which points from a full list of benefits/requirements is specifically applicable to whichever group you are targeting. Therefore we spent some time working out our master list of messages. To finish off, we had a brief review of what and when our training events should be, how we will produce the necessary accompanying materials, some thoughts for the user survey, a look at possible events next year we can piggy-back on to for dissemination purposes and a review of all the many actions we now have to complete!


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Next full project team meeting - January in Leeds

The date of the next RePosit full project team meeting has been set for 13th/14th January 2011 and this meeting will take place in Leeds.

Lizzie Dipple

Meeting with JISC programme managers

Last week was quite a week for meetings in the RePosit project. In addition to Monday's full team project meeting in Exeter, on Wednesday 15th September Richard Jones, Bo Middleton (project director) and I met with David Flanders and Balviar Notay from JISC, which is the key funder of this project.

David and Balviar explained where RePosit sits within the JISCdepo ('Deposit of research outputs') strand of the Information Environment Programme of projects. The three main areas in JISCdepo are: projects related to tools for deposit (our CRIS system-based project fits in here), projects around infrastructure (such as the SWORD standard) and projects collecting use cases (SONEX). Discussing RePosit in more detail, we looked at what our project aims to achieve and what the outputs will be, and we had fantastic feedback on what form these could take to be most useful to the wider JISC deposit community. The project partner HEIs are each at different stages along the path of repository and publications management system set-up, advocacy, training and use - and the intention is that these different stages will be mirrored in the 'packs' of training and advocacy materials and plans that are produced during RePosit. Some HEIs (often the smallest) are at the starting point, having had neither a repository nor the link between it and a publications management system before at all; some have a repository and a limited number or scope of deposits but really need to re-brand and start advocacy and training almost from scratch with certain sectors; and some HEIs have a large, established repository and have done previous advocacy but want to review and update as well as taking on board the new means of deposit via the CRIS publications management system link.

We also looked at how we hope to develop our user community space into an open forum for sharing advocacy through the project's life and even beyond, and how we could perhaps link in to the RSP (Repositories Support Project) to aid the wider dissemination of training and materials.

All in all, a productive and informative discussion.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple (project manager)

New team photo

It seems that the team photo taken at our first project meeting held in July at Queen Mary, University of London wasn't very popular in some quarters. So at lunchtime during our recent project meeting held at the University of Exeter we nipped outside and took a new one.



standing (left to right): Ellie James (Keele), Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Ian Tilsed (Exeter), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Sarah Molloy (QMUL), Jill Evans (Exeter)
seated (left to right): Jodie Double (Leeds), Bo Middleton (Leeds), Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic), Richard Jones (Sympletic)


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Help - I'm in acronym hell ...... CRIS, RIS, or RMS?

Just went to update my recent post - to use 'RMS' (Research Management System) rather than 'RIS' (Research Information System).

Then I had a brief look at various websites ..... which made me think that the wider community (ie JISC/standards/euro-Uni community) has adopted 'CRIS' (Current Research Information System....... why the 'c'?).

I think, since we're often referring to 'Symplectic Elements', 'RMS' makes more sense to me/our project, or perhaps it should be 'Next Generation Publications Database' (Pub DB v2.0)...... I think because I see Symplectic Elements as being a subset of a RIS/CRIS functionality - it currently helps to manage the publications part of 'research information' and not all the other information created, or which needs to be managed at other stages of the research lifecycle.

Anyway, now I'm thinking of changing every reference on our blogs to 'CRIS' - perhaps we should standardise on that even though 'Current Research Information System' doesn't really fit with Symplectic Elements/Symplectic repository tools.

aarrgh

Bo Middleton (University of Leeds)

Who's following RePosit in cyberspace?

Last week, in the run-up to our project team meeting held on Monday, I took a look at the statistics for visits to the RePosit project blog for our first progress report. Using SeeTheStats (you'll also find the tiny URL link on the right-hand side of the blog at all times), we can see the past month's numbers for how many people came to read this blog, how long they stayed and where they were from. Looking today the totals for the past month are:

• 390 visits
• 796 page views
• 173 absolutely unique visitors
• 624 unique page views
• 25% of visits are international

Our grand totals from the point of setting up the blog are 568 visits and 236 absolute unique visitors.

For a project that only got started recently and doesn't yet have tangible outputs to share, that's not bad going. Interestingly, the biggest peak of interest so far was in the last week of August, so I wonder if anyone out there knows what sparked that? My best guess is that in the run-up to the Repository Fringe 2010 event there was extra interest in the subject of projects working in this area.

We welcome comments, so please feel free to interact with the project team via the blog. There are other ways of keeping up with RePosit. We have now got seven followers on Twitter outside our project team, and even the Pecha Kucha presentation written for the Fringe has elicited a following. Please do join the user community space we've set up, which is for all discussions around deposit, using CRIS systems and how we can share knowledge to solve problems together as a community.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple (project manager)

Reflections on the RePosit Project

I met with JISC Programme Managers yesterday, ie the JISC staff who steer the projects funded under the JISC Grant Funding Call 2/10: Deposit of research outputs and Exposing digital content for education and research. The meeting was a useful reminder of what the RePosit project is all about, and how important it is to remember how other Unis may benefit from our project……….

• The RePosit project is innovative – there aren’t many people out there who are thinking about how a research management system (or RMS) can be used as the mechanism for depositing research outputs in the institutional repository, and thus embedding deposit in the research lifecycle. Many institutions are considering adoption of a RMS, some will also consider ‘integration’ with an institutional repository, some won’t – RePosit findings will be able to inform that decision.
• The RePosit project is well placed to consider the impact of RMSs because of the diversity of the project partners – different repositories, different stages of adoption of a RMS/repository, and different levels of experience in repository advocacy. RePosit project outputs will be focussed to support those that are moving from repository advocacy to RMS/repository advocacy AND those that are starting repository advocacy with RMS as the primary interface.

Also, saw some interesting stuff on Lorcan Dempsey’s blog last week – with links to other relevant stuff http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/002134.html . It reminded me of a Chris Rusbridge blog some time ago http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2008/08/repositories-and-cris.html . Both get a bit technical – but underlying both blogs is the idea that a RIS can improve deposits by ensuring that information about a publication is only entered (or harvested) once – ie by simplifying the process for an academic. Which reminded me – at our project meeting earlier this week – we compiled a list of key advocacy messages – for repositories, for a RMS/repository model, and for the RMS itself …..... We had ‘do it once’ on our list of course – but we need to add RMS harvesting functionality to our list. Watch out for more on this in January – when our first project outputs should be ready…….

Bo Middleton
RePosit Project Director
Head of e-Strategy, University of Leeds Library

2nd RePosit meeting, Exeter 13th Sep

The 2nd RePosit meeting was held in Exeter on Monday 13th Sep.

The focus of the meeting was around the advocacy strategies and materials and thinking about the mechanisms by which they would be delivered. This was informed by the literature reviews and experiences at our institutions. Through a very intense but creative process, there are now actions for the HEIs to draw up their advocacy plans and for Symplectic to start work on the training materials. Further dissemination and communication events were also suggested.

The next meeting is scheduled for January in Leeds and there will be run throughs of the presentations ready for feedback as well as detailed scheduling of the workshops in each institution.

The project team met up for a meal on Sunday and this was a great opportunity to chat and catch up. The project is already generating good networking opportunities and good practice sharing both with Symplectic and repositories but also with other aspects of our professional work.

Nicola Cockarill
Senior Subject Librarian, University of Plymouth

Presentation from RepoFringe 2010

Here is the Pecha Kucha presentation Sarah gave at the Repository Fringe last week (link here if you can't see the embedded version below):

JISC RePosit RepoFringe2010 presentation

View more presentations from RePosit project.

Here is the video (sadly the sound quality isn't fantastic, so put the volume up to full):
http://archive.zepler.tv/308/


And here is the live blog from the Fringe event that includes Sarah's presentation:
Live Blog: Pecha Kucha Session Two.


Posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Repository Fringe 2010

Back at my desk after the foray north of the border for Repository Fringe 2010. Despite serious nerves and really not feeling like I knew what I was on about, the project seemed to go down well and I'm hoping people will start to get involved. I hope some of our message got across through my chattering teeth!

Thanks to Lizzie for all the help with getting the slides ready and general moral support.


Sarah Molloy