What's happening at Exeter

We still don’t have a definite date for the roll out of Repository Tools here but crosswalks and collection mapper seem to be working so we’re almost ready for testing with users, hopefully starting next week or the week after.

An important breakthrough for us is that automated emailing of depositors notifying them that their submission has either been approved or rejected is now working. Thanks to Ian Wellaway for his hard work on this – if anyone else is interested we’d be happy to share what we (or rather Ian) did.

I’ve started planning advocacy activities in more detail in the hope that we have to be ready to go some time soon.

• We’ve identified a number of testers from different subject areas – the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences are particularly keen as the new EPSRC open access ruling means they have to put all their funded research publications on OA starting September.
• I’m having a series of meetings with the Academic Support Consultants to plan advocacy in the Colleges from September – hoping to get a clear picture of what they are able to do, to whom, when, and what supporting materials they will need me to create for them (adapting RePosit materials).
• We’ve been invited to give a presentation to Associate Deans of Research in mid-September – a really great opportunity initiated by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Transfer, who is a real supporter of OA. These are obviously key people when it comes to influencing researchers in the various Colleges.
• I’m aiming for a big repositories push during OA Week in October, plugging RT using RePosit materials at various events that I’m in the process of planning.
• Have started work on an OA web site to be launched in OA week.
• Seeing our design studio this week to talk about commissioning some UoE repository leaflets – to be used alongside the RePosit materials.
• Started work on a Library ‘repositories@exeter’ web page providing a single point of access to repositories & Repository Tools, news, events, training materials, advice etc. – currently info is buried in the Library pages and difficult to find – this r@e link will appear prominently on the Library home page: http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/
• Working on content for a new course for PGRs ‘Getting yourself known: how to enhance your research profile’ – this will include a demo of Repository Tools.
• Will be doing training with Academic Support Consultants after testing is completed.
• Have started to use Twitter to alert people to repository developments.

We'll be doing more, but this is just to start with – I’ll post more as we start to make progress. If anyone has any comments or suggestions please let me know: jill.evans@exeter.ac.uk

posted by: Jill Evans

RePosit at yesterday's RSP conference

As has been mentioned in a number of recent posts on this blog, the RePosit project was very much involved in the RSP conference entitled 'Repositories and CRIS: working smartly together', which took place yesterday, Tuesday 19th July, at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham. We had an hour-and-a-half slot in the morning, during which we facilitated five interactive break-out discussion sessions (as listed below) and gave a series of presentations around those topics to share some of the findings from the project. The audience was a good mix of repository managers/library staff and people from the research office, with a sprinkling of IT and others, and we had some interesting discussions. There will be individual blog posts about each of the discussion topics in more detail - to follow.

1. JOINING SYSTEMS: WHO OWNS/ADMINS/LINKS THE SYSTEMS TOGETHER? In a blended landscape does it matter whether or not you have a separate repository? What are the implications for pre-existing repository services of the CRIS+repository model? How is legacy data handled? How do the two systems complement each other? Who owns the system?

2. CRIS/REPOSITORY ADVOCACY. Do you advocate as separate systems or as one system? If the CRIS and Repository are integrated, do you need to brand the repository, is the focus on the CRIS or is a combination approach best?

3. ENGAGING YOUR RESEARCHERS. What will motivate researchers to upload to the repository using the CRIS? What is special about it? How do we SELL it? Carrot or stick?

4. DEMONSTRATING THE BENEFITS: ADVOCACY STRATEGY IN A CRIS->REPOSITORY WORLD. Any advocacy strategy begins with identifying stakeholders and advocacy methodology. In a CRIS-to-repository model are there people, issues and tools to consider that are different to other deposit models, and if so, how to we deal with them?

5. COMMUNITY AND COMMUNICATIONS TO SUPPORT THE CRIS MODEL. Does the CRIS->repository world require new thinking? How best do we share the knowledge and experience? Are existing forums sufficient?

posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Busy busy with dissemination preparations

Despite the recent blog silence, in fact there’s quite a lot going on with RePosit at the moment. Next Tuesday is our main project dissemination event for the whole year (although Jodie Double has just agreed to present at the Repositories Fringe in Edinburgh next month too) – at the RSP event in Nottingham. Six members of the project team – Ellie James (Keele), Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary), Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Jodie Double (Leeds) and Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic) – will be there representing RePosit, outlining our project findings so far and sharing our experiences of advocacy planning and in action. Therefore we’re all busily making final changes to presentations, running over organisational details and tying together our sessions. We’ve been using our usual Skype call method of keeping in touch and facilitating necessary discussions. Roll on Tuesday...


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

New project team photos

As at previous project meetings, after the day's proceedings were completed we took a team photo to commemorate our meeting in London on 16th June (above). Left to right: Ian Tilsed (Exeter), Gillian Still (Exeter), Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Jodie Double (Leeds), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary), Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic).

Since Ellie had to leave very swiftly to catch her train she's in a separate earlier photo (below). Ellie James (Keele).


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

4th project team meeting minutes

Last month - on Thursday 16th June - we held our fourth project team meeting, in London (after previous meetings in the north and south-west of the UK). This was a crucial time to get the project team together because, even with our report write-up project extension, we're now in the final quarter of the project cycle. So it was key to make sure that the project advocacy work continues on track, and also to sort out any wobbles or issues. In addition, everyone who comes to these meetings has said that getting together like that is the best way to re-energise for the tasks at hand.

Aside from an update on the various strands of project progress - outputs, such as the advocacy materials (we saw Ellie's first printed posters and postcards for Keele - very exciting to see them in the flesh), the survey and the deposit community Google discussion group we've created and are trying to keep alive; and outcomes, such as how we're noting engagement with the repositories - we had two major areas to get our teeth into: (i) the upcoming RSP event taking place in Nottingham on 19th July, which is our major project dissemination opportunity, and (ii) how to put together the content for the final project report itself. Both subjects were large enough we could have spent twice as long on each, but at the end of the day we had shared out topics to work on for the RSP event and had brainstormed quite a good proportion of the sorts of points we already know we want to make in the final project report. Oh yes, there are plenty of lessons to be learned!

The full meeting minutes are available here.


Posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Advocacy materials

These are the advocacy materials developed for Keele University and are currently being distributed around the campus to raise awareness

Poster:

Leaflet (2 sided)

An editable version of these will be made available for other Universities to use, as part of the outputs from the REPOSIT project

Ellie James
Keele University

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