Repository masterclass @ ILI

The Internet Librarian International Conference in London, October 8-9 has a repository masterclass. Run by Frank Cervone of Northwestern University, USA it’s called ‘Repositories and Digital Initiatives’. The class is on the Sunday 7th October, before the conference. It looks very practical and the blurb says ‘through this step-by-step road map and by looking at examples of repositories that have been implemented in many different countries, you’ll leave the session ready to plan your own’. I like the idea of looking at existing examples, that’s my learning style..
Another quick plug – on the Sunday afternoon is the session ‘Using blogs effectively within your organisation’, run by Brian Kelly and myself.. Quick, sign up!.. 🙂

Our newly re-slated turret and re-painted finial.. a sizable architectural quirk on our otherwise tiny house! A work of art really, by Dan and Jay – roofers extraordinaire…

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Visit to Loughborough IR

Last Thursday I met up with Steph (from the Repositories Support Project) in Loughborough to check out the University of Loughborough Institutional Repository. Originally I’d contacted them after reading articles written by Jo Barwick and placed in the repository. We met with Jeff and Kate, who explained how they’ve set up their repository installation and their experiences. Kate gave us a run through of depositing an item in their DSpace account – they’ve a completely mediated service. It was tremendously useful to see and well worth the three and a half hours each way on the train. I’d written about twenty questions, including the following (with answers):
Q. What kind of statistics do they collect?
A. They use Google Analytics at the moment but interested in the stats plug-in from DSpace (which reminds me – are DSpace stats counter compliant?)
Q. Does the repository interface with their Research Expertise database (our PIP)?
A. No, but potentially that’s where they’re going. I’d like to know if anyone has managed this?
Q. Have they ever had anyone make a copyright complaint, coming in from their Notice and Takedown Policy?
A. Nope.
Q. What is checked in the mediation stage?
A. The journal/publisher policies for self-archiving, the file, all metadata is input, LCSH info added, and their Creative Commons license page is added to the front of the pdf.
Q. How long to deposit an item?
A. About ten minutes if all is in order..
Q. Staffing?
A. Outlined in the docs by Jo Barwick – originally a Repository manager to set up, now two years later there is deposit support from their technical services department, systems support from their Library Systems people, and the repository management is part of a Support Services Librarian post.

It was great to actually look under the bonnet of their repository, thanks again to Jeff and Kate and Jo for writing up her experiences.

White cliffs along the coast near Poole and Swanage.. completely the wrong direction to Loughborough but nevermind. Jelly-knee material when you’re up near the edge looking over.

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Blogging

Over at the social networking site Ning there’s a Library 2.0 community. Brian Kelly from UKOLN has established a little group within this to gather thoughts and ideas for a Blogging Masterclass that we’re presenting at the Internet Librarian International conference in London, 7 October 2007. Brian has a phancy new phone with a camera, so muggins here was caught off-guard this morning and has been roped doing a short promo for the masterclass and Ning pages. It won’t embed in this page so here’s a link:

http://www.vcasmo.com/video/ukwebfocus/314

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Writing supporting information

I’m at the point of drafting information to support the deposit of items into our repository. There’s a lot of good documentation out there for existing repositories, which surprisingly makes it quite difficult – I’m going to have to shoot off some emails requesting permission for re-use or risk plagarising wildly.. One thing I haven’t seen written up is advice on dealing with material which has been produced with sponsorship from industry. Most repositories don’t accept material with commercial implications, but is this an issue that needs awareness raising, perhaps to help with negotiations at the commencement of the sponsorship? This was brought up in our legal team meeting. Will restrictions placed by industrial sponsors pose as much of an issue for depositors as restrictions from publishers?

The Eden Project – we visited in late June. Excellent day out, even with weather like this.. a great example of building something great out of nothing.

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Using a wiki to record progress

What did we do before we had wikis? I really don’t know – had multiple versions of the same document floating around in people’s email I suppose, or saved it on shared drives that required emails back and forward to IT services for access to save in. Or internal intranets with designated staff only allowed to upload and edit material…
We have a university wide wiki system using Confluence, and it’s tremendous. Simple to use, easy to edit, history control, access and permissions which are easy to organise, simple exports to pdf, word or print formats, the list goes on.
I’ve been storing the work I’m doing for the repository on our wiki. The members of the repository working party can see exactly what’s going on and can make changes or leave comments. For me it’s a single storage point for the work I’ve done, which consequently makes it easy to visualise what needs to happen next.
I realise I sound like I’m evangelising but I’m definitely a wiki convert. These are great tools for brainstorming, managing projects and sharing information.

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Licenced to publish

Yesterday we met with two legal people from the University to discuss licences and legal requirements for outlining deposit agreements and the like. The discussion brought up points I hadn’t thought to consider, and also highlighted the need to provide information and education on Intellectual Property Rights, including copyright and the fine print for publishing industry funded work.

Today I was trawling through a database and came across an article published by researchers here, published in a journal that is, by Sherpa ROMEO standards, a ‘white‘ journal. This means archiving is not formally supported by the publisher. I took a look at the publisher copyright statement to be signed by authors. It requires the author to agree to the following:

The author(s), in consideration of the acceptance of the above work for publication, does hereby assign and transfer to {the publisher} all of the rights and interest in and to the copyright of the above-titled work in its current form and in any subsequent ly revised form for publication and/or electronic dissemination.

Now I understand this has been standard practice for publishers and authors, but would I want to divest myself so entirely of the right to my own intellectual capital? It highlights for me the need to offer signposting to alternatives to these licences. Why not try an addendum or use the JISC/SURF Licence to Publish?

Awareness is clearly the key to making informed decisions on what happens to your intellectual property. I’m going to be working on developing material for our website, for training sessions and anywhere else I can get my foot in.

(Licence or License – my natural instinct is for the ‘s’, sorry… a case of the old ‘separated by a common language’. I fall between the two.)

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Sharing

If the entertainment blogs are to be believed, the Britney Spears approach to sharing means splitting your half-finished lollypop with the new man in your life (I’m not linking to my sources – *this* is a quality blog..!).
I’m not sure generosity should extend that far, but the following is certainly a much better example of sharing. I’ve just found a pre-print by Joanna Barwick in the Loughborough Repository. It’s entitled Collecting Loughborough’s research: the story of our Institutional Repository. The handle, or link is http://hdl.handle.net/2134/2992.
This stuff is like gold dust, and reading about the experiences of repository development at Loughborough is invaluable. Well played, Joanna and the Loughborough team.

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Social bookmarking tools and repositories

Are there any institutional repositories out there that incorporate social bookmarking tools?

A strong advocacy claim for depositing material in a repository is that this increases access to the material and subsequently increases citation rates. If we’re to look at web citations, wouldn’t adding options to post to del.icio.us, Connotea, CiteULike, etc. on each item record aid in resource discovery of that item and consequently increase the chances of citation?
I know RSS feeds can be set up from repositories, which is a useful alerting service for getting information out. However, I’m thinking of the viral attributes of social bookmarks, widening awareness of an item. The serendipitous discovery of the breadcrumb trail when following one item’s tag or viewing other bookmarks belonging to a person with whom you share a tag.
Adding social bookmarking options can be neatly done. I love the ‘Share and Enjoy’ option on the DigitalKoans blog from Charles Bailey (highly recommended – in fact it’s going on my blogroll). Not everyone uses all of these bookmarking tools, and to be honest there’s little need to use more than one but that’s one way of getting your paper or article bookmarked and collected.

It’s so obvious surely someone has had a crack at it?

Photo: The other focus in my life at the moment – the saga of getting the roof re-felted and re-tiled. What do you need to know about membranes, slate tiles, scaffolding, … ?

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Choosing repository software

WHAT DO WE WANT? *Immediate decisive action*

WHEN DO WE WANT IT? *Sometime quite soon I should think…*

It’s always the things you think are going to be straightforward that end up being riddled with detail and complexity. Choosing a software platform for the repository was a case in point.

It’s kind of like re-inventing the wheel. You know most institutions with a repository have been through this scenario. Having a quick reference guide comparing the software available would be fantastic – not just technical specifications but real selling points of one system over the other. This came up at the RSP summer school as a lot of people were in the same boat.

Just for the record, we found these documents to be really useful:

Technical evaluation of selected open source repository solutions on behalf of CPIT, New Zealand

Creating an Institutional Repository: LEADIRS Workbook from MIT and Cambridge Libraries

Notes from colleagues who had been through the same evaluation process were EXTREMELY helpful also (thanks D.)

At any rate, we short-listed EPrints and DSpace for comparison, as we wanted something ‘out of the box’, open source and with a good user community. Fedora would have offered a terrific solution, but unfortunately we ruled it out as we wanted something fast with minimal person-power to get it underway. I notice that some of the more mature repositories in Australia are moving to Fedora with various interface options, so something to keep an eye on.

At the end of the day one of the key criteria that swayed our decision was integration with existing IT systems and expertise. Apparently we’re java based with better Oracle infrastructure and a SOAP web interface would map well to other applications (I feel like I’ve just started speaking another language..).

The ideal solution would have been a platform with a robust user community (in the UK?), good integration with existing systems, and one to which the newly developed Scholarly Works Application Profile could be applied. I think we’ll need a FRBR based model as some point, particularly if we look at linking up datasets down the road.

So we’ve chosen DSpace. I’d be really interested to see what kind of experiences other people had making this selection.

A photo of the Baths to cheer things up.

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Putting the story in repoSiTORY

Over on Brian Kelly’s blog I’ve written a guest post on developing and finding online communities.

Since starting as Research Publications Librarian, I’ve been trying to use the tools that I’ve become accustomed to using for my information – blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and networking sites, etc. Finding the Open Access communities is a doddle – start at Peter Suber’s Open Access News and it branches out from there.

Narrowing this down, my post below reflects a little on the search for repository voices in the blogosphere, and apparently Sherpa is working on joining voices up in the UK as part of the Repository Support Project.

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