Welsh Repository Network

WRN-EP Team sign off

2011-03-29T15:47:00.000+01:00

This is the last official blog post of the WRN-EP Team with the current project coming to an end on 31 March 2011.

We'd like to say many thanks to our project partners for working with us over the last two years. Also, many thanks to our colleagues within the greater repository community for their input and advice in regard to project activities.

Please visit the Welsh Repository Network community within the Aberystwyth University repository CADAIR to view and download the HowTos, learning objects, presentations and report documentation produced over the course of the WRN-EP.

The WRN will continue beyond the life of the WRN-EP in the form of a WHELF sub-group, with partners meeting on a biannual basis to exchange repository news and ideas.

JISC repository project activity is also continuing within the WRN with the AEIOU Wales Project running until 31 July 2011.

Launch of Theses Collection Wales

2011-02-21T16:05:00.008Z

On Friday 18th February 2011 the Welsh Repository Network held a launch event for ' Theses Collection Wales'. The collection allows users to view both electronic and paper copies of theses and dissertations from every Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Wales through a dedicated catalogue.

Screen shot of 'Theses Collection Wales'

Held in Y Drwm at the National Library of Wales the launch event was attended by approximately 35 people from around Wales.

The Theses Collection Wales includes approximately 50,000 theses and dissertations which have been presented for postgraduate degrees in Welsh HEIs. The collection comprises theses and dissertations arising from PhD and research Masters degrees, as well as taught Masters dissertations which have a Welsh interest or have gained a distinction.

Participants at the launch

The vast majority of the current collection is in paper format, but electronic deposit is becoming increasingly common. Through the WRN every HEI in Wales has developed an institutional repository to store and provide online access to their research output, including electronic theses and dissertations - more commonly referred to as 'e-theses'. In 2009 the NLW and the WRN began work on the ‘e-theses harvesting service.’ This service enabled the NLW to collect, through harvesting, copies of the full-text e-theses and to provide continued access to them through preservation management.

The project team

Anyone may search Theses Collection Wales but to access the resources within the collection it is necessary to register as a NLW reader. This will enable you to request to view a print copy of a thesis in the Library Reading Rooms or alternatively to view and download an e-thesis within the catalogue.

All of the electronic PhD theses that have been collected by the NLW from participating institutions will be further harvested by the British Library’s EThOS service. EThOS aims to provide access to all theses produced by UK higher education. For more information regarding EThOS visit http://ethos.bl.uk/

The presentations delivered during the event are now available online by following the relevant links below:

A Long and Winding Road: the creation of Theses Collection Wales
Jackie Knowles, Project Manager, Welsh Repository Network

Demonstration of Theses Collection Wales
Siân Thomas, National Library of Wales

The future of repositories
Balviar Notay, Information Environment Programme Manager, JISC

EThOS Update
Vicky Roy & Andy Appleyard, British Library

RSP e-theses briefing papers

2010-12-09T10:20:00.002Z

The RSP have made a number of reports and briefing papers authored by UCL, regarding e-theses concerns available on their website: http://www.rsp.ac.uk/help/publications/#briefing-papers (they can be found near the end of the page). The papers cover:

Influencing the Deposit of Electronic Theses in UK HE. Report on a sector-wide survey into thesis deposit and open access
Influencing the Deposit of Electronic Theses in UK HE, Appendix. Full text responses from a sector-wide survey into thesis deposit and open access
Vision, Impact, Success: mandating electronic theses. Case studies of e-theses mandates in practice in the UK Higher Education sector.
Third party copyright
Impact on future publication
Managing embargos
Plagiarism
Policies and guidelines available on the internet
Sensitive content
Workflow analysis

E-thesis & Dissertation Bibliography

2010-11-30T10:59:00.003Z

Digital Scholarship have released version 5 of their E-thesis and Dissertation Bibliography.

'This selective bibliography includes articles, books, conference papers, technical reports, unpublished e-prints and other scholarly textual resources that are useful in understanding e-theses and dissertations.'

Digital Scholarship have also collated bibliographies relating to:

Institutional Repositories
Digital Curation and Preservation
Open Access Journals
Scholarly Electronic Publishing

OA Week Competition winner: Misha Jepson, Glyndŵr University

2010-11-02T14:23:00.003Z

We are pleased to announce Misha from Glyndŵr University as our OA Competition winner!!

Misha’s engagement story described the use of advocacy to both gain the attention of an institution’s senior management team and to effectively put across the benefits of a repository to an institution. The story showed the importance of the ‘Elevator Pitch’ advocacy technique in grabbing opportunities where you can to get your case heard. It also showed how aligning the use of the repository with the institution’s strategic aims can embed the system within an institution’s structure.

A copy of Misha's winning story is available here.

RAE data available for download: JISC MERIT project

2010-11-02T14:22:00.002Z

A new resource which may be of interest to those who are looking to use their institutions’ RAE data to populate their repository and/ or other publication management systems.

The JISC MERIT project has just launched its RAE submissions database which contains data on every UK institutions’ RAE submission.

The database offers faceted searching on the citation data held by: institution; Unit of Assessment; output type; author. The results of any combination of these searches can then be exported and saved to Excel files.

From what I can see the database only holds citation data. It does not seem to offer full-text, links out and/or DOI look ups.

Open Access Week Competition

2010-09-13T10:25:00.003+01:00

The week of Monday 18th - Sunday 24th October has been allocated as Open Access Week across the globe. Now in its 4th year, this dedicated week aims to promote 'Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research'.

To mark the occasion we at the WRN are running a competition for partners with an Open Access theme. We are looking for your best repository success story. Whether it's a story of success convincing an academic researcher to interact with the repository, or a tale of success regarding a deposited item that ended up proving the wide-reaching audience of the repository.

Entries can be as long or as short as you want and we are looking to put the best stories together in a blog post and perhaps even in a new advocacy learning object!

The competition is open from now until the Friday before Open Access Week (15th October). There will be a prize available for the winning entry.

Good luck!

Learn about other Open Access Week events, contests and resources through http://www.openaccessweek.org/.

Repositories and CRIS article

2010-08-20T11:13:00.001+01:00

An article has been published in the latest issue of Ariadne about the Repositories and CRIS event we ran in Leeds in May this year. ‘Learning how to play nicely: Repositories and CRIS’ is available from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/.

The full contents of the journal issue, which may also be of interest, including articles on e-books, Library 2.0 and data management is available from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/#main-articles.

Annual growth figures now available

2010-08-11T11:53:00.002+01:00

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I have now collated our latest batch of statistical data which means we now have growth figures covering a full 12 month period. Overall, we have seen a very healthy 43.73% growth in the number of items within our repositories over the past year - well done all!

UKCGE Report on PhD Theses Confidentiality

2010-08-04T11:36:00.003+01:00

Interseting report from Tina Barnes, UK Council for Graduate Education looking at the issue of confidentiality and embargo requests on PhD theses: http://www.ukcge.ac.uk/Resources/UKCGE/Documents/PDF/Confidentiality%20of%20PhD%20Theses%20in%20the%20UK%20(2010).pdf. Report based on a survey conducted in March 2010 with refelctions to previous 2005 survey on the same topic.

Barnes reports that the most commonly cited reason for an embargo is the protection of 'commercial interests.' However, the number of requests has not increased since the first survey in 2005 despite the progression of open access and e-deposit. This, it is claimed, is due to e-submission and repository deposit not yet becoming standard practice within UK HEIs.

The report also comments on alternative approaches to the e-presentation of embargoed theses such as 'embargoed appendices.'

New IPR discussion papers

2010-08-03T12:15:00.003+01:00

Two new IPR discussion papers have passed under my nose in the last couple of days that others may find of interest:

Korn, N and Oppenheim, C. July 2010. JISC IPR and Licensing White Paper: A Discussion Piece. Version 1.0. http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/3553

British Library. Driving UK research: is copyright a help or a hindrance?- a perspective from the research community. http://www.bl.uk/ip/pdf/drivingukresearch.pdf

Both of these pieces question current IPR and copyright practices and the detrimental effect they may be having in the digital age and to current research and research practices.

Reflections from OR2010: Part 2

2010-07-15T14:33:00.000+01:00

Another activity I was involved in at OR2010 was the Developer Challenge as a ‘non-techie’ judge. Organised by the DevSci project (managed by UKOLN, funded by JISC), this year’s challenge was to ‘create a functioning repository user-interface, presenting a single metadata record which includes as many automatically created, useful links to related external content as possible.’

The winning entry was from Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl, University of London Computer Centre, who enhanced the records of the Linnean Collections, held on EPrints, which the ULCC are responsible for. As many of the metadata fields in the record as possible linked out to external sites- some general such as Google and Wikipedia and some more subject specific such as horticultural indexes. Although only one metadata record was demonstrated, the links which appeared in the record were determined by the entries on a master sheet (an excel spreadsheet) and therefore, would apply to all records within the repository. This development came out top as although the links weren’t truly automated, they were managed externally, it was felt that this was actually advantage for a non-techie repository manager could update for themselves rather than calling on the support of a tame developer.

Coming in a narrow second was ChEsis, presented by Sam Adams, University of Cambridge, which created links to enhance Chemistry e-thesis records. Links were available to show chemical structures of molecules/ crystals used/ created along with their mass spectrums. Fun links were also included such as the Last FM playlist of the student when their thesis was submitted and the BBC headlines for the day.

Another entry utilised OpenCalais to automatically create links from their created repository record. OpenCalais is a free to use service which automatically creates links from open content to other open content sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr etc. It can be used to add a bit of fun to any open source web content such as a blog but be warned the links are automatic and you can’t necessarily restrict what content it links to!

A full write-up and videos of all the Developer Challenge entries is available via DevSci blog.

Reflections from OR2010: Part 1

2010-07-14T17:29:00.003+01:00

Last week Antony and I attended the 5th International Conference on Open Repositories in Madrid. The conference boasted a fully packed, 4 day programme including ‘General’ presentation sessions, User group sessions, working groups and forums. Nearly 500 delegates were in attendance, representing countries from all across the globe.

One of the reasons Antony and I were in attendance was to present a Poster, authored in conjunction with Glen Robson and Ioan Isaac-Richards from the NLW, about the work of the Welsh e-theses harvesting service. A copy of the poster is available from the Aberystwyth University repository CADAIR.

With parallel streams running for the majority of the programme there were too many sessions for one person to attend- let alone comment on- so below I’ve discussed the sessions I found of most interest and relevance to the work of the WRN.

The first couple of interesting sessions related to nationwide open access/ repository support networks: the first located in Germany; the second located in Australia. The OAN (Open Access Network) initiated by the DINI (German Initiative for Network Information) and funded for a two-year term by the German Research Foundation (DFG), has created an over-arching infrastructure between quality certified German IRs to act as a single interface for research promotion and to support other DINI Open- Access projects. DINI certification, a certificate of IR quality, denotes that an IR utilises international standards, such as DRIVER for metadata, has determined and makes its policies regarding use clear and available, and is well-positioned within both its own institution and the greater open access arena.

The OAN harvests data from the DINI certified repositories within Germany, aggregates the data and puts it through a number of value added modules such as data clean-up, FT link finding, OCR, and citation tracking. The aggregated data is then presented within a single search interface, and acts as a single point for data export and further harvesting. It also acts as a single point for the other OA projects, some of which were presented at OR2010, such as OAS (Open-Access Statistik) and OAFR (OA Subject Based Repositories).

The OAN is also responsible for increasing the number of certified repositories and offers support to repository managers in order for their repository to achieve certification. The alignment of WRN repositories, specifically in the area of policies, is an area of focus for the WRN team this autumn so the process of DINI certification will work well as a basis for this process.

Caroline Drury, University of Southern Queensland presented on the ANDS (Australian National Data Service), a service looking to inform and influence national policy on the curation of data. ANDS has created Research Data Australia, a central collection of curated data sets produced by Australian academics. ANDS also offers the following services: Publish my data; Register my data; Identify my data; which are related to this central collection. Also based at Queensland is Tim McCallum, the technical support half of the CAIRSS repository support team (the team resembles that of the WRN team with one technical and one organisational support officer). Piggy-backed on to a CAIRSS repository survey, ANDS has been investigating the data management practices at Australian Universities. This survey found that there was a low-level of repository manager involvement within the University in regards to data management, a trend that ANDS are looking to change with Senior Management intervention, in conjunction with CAIRSS. Data management is a new area of interest for the WRN so we will be watching the progress of ANDS with interest.

The other session of direct relevance and interest in regards to the work of the WRN, and more specifically the poster presented e-theses harvesting service, was from Nikos Houssous, National Documentation Centre (EKT), Greece. Nikos was describing the National Archive of PhD Theses developed at EKT, a single search interface presented within DSpace. Like the NLW in Wales, the EKT have a historic role in the collection of Greek PhD theses, a role they were looking to extend to the digital realm. The EKT are undertaking a digitisation project of the PhDs currently held in print form, as well as encouraging institutions to submit theses electronically. Records are held in a bespoke theses admin system and then pushed to both the DSpace system (via SOAP in ETD-MS (a metadata standard for e-theses devised by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)) and to the EKT Library Catalogue (via Z39.50 in UNIMARC). The DSpace collection also forms a central harvesting point for DART Europe, a service aggregating PhD theses records for the whole of Europe. I was unaware of NDLTD and ETD-MS before Nikos’ presentation and their relation to DART is of interest to the next stage of the Welsh e-theses harvesting service.

Through other sessions and networking I became aware of two other national aggregation services: NARCIS in the Netherlands and RCAAP in Portugal. Whereas RCAAP is an aggregation of IR content, NARCIS is an aggregation of IR and National information, such as DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services). There are also plans to incorporate the data from METIS the Dutch national CRIS, which will provide much richer information about researchers and their projects. Anecdotally, the NARCIS presenter reported that theses and dissertations were the most frequently retrieved items through the system, perhaps as NARCIS provided the only central point of discovery for these types of items.

It’s certainly nice to know that the work of the WRN parallels that carried out within other countries and that we have an extended network to call upon when in need of best practice advice.

2010 Ranking Web of Repositories

2010-07-12T09:35:00.005+01:00

The second edition of 2010 Ranking Web of Repositories has been published:
http://repositories.webometrics.info/

Close to 1000 repositories have been analyzed this year and the top 800 are ranked here according to their web presence and visibility. The aim of this ranking is to support Open Access initiatives and therefore the free access to scientific publications in an electronic form and to other academic material. The web indicators are used here to measure the global visibility and impact of the scientific repositories. Two lists are available - top 800 and top 800 institutional.

I've done a bit of trawling and number crunching on the institutional list extracting both a ranked list for UK only institutional repositories, and a subset of those Welsh repositories that appear in the list. Of the top 800 institutional repositories globally the UK has 82 entries and Wales has five entries from those. Details:

International rank (UK rank in brackets)

257 (18th in UK) Aberystwyth
601 (62nd in UK) Bangor
696 (73rd in UK) Glamorgan
730 (78th in UK) UWIC
752 (80th in UK) Trinity

Bits and bobs

2010-07-12T09:13:00.003+01:00

Over the past week or so I've collected together a few random repository related items that might be of interest to our partners. Enjoy!

Copyright Workflows
Ann Hanlon and Marisa Ramirez. "Asking for Permission: A Survey of Copyright Workflows for Institutional Repositories" 2010
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/marisa_ramirez/14

This poster details the results of a US survey about copyright workflows and was presented at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association, Washington, D.C. in June 2010. Exploring staffing, resources, activities and tools employed to clear copyright for published work, with the intent to deposit into an IR, this nicely summarises their preliminary findings. In 2008 a survey was undertaken in the UK on the same topic:

Jones, Mark. Intellectual property rights survey, University of East Anglia, 2008
http://www.uea.ac.uk/is/digitalrepository/heiprsurvey

New Team Digital Preservation Film
WePreserve and Planets have released their fourth Team Digital Preservation film. Team Digital Preservation and Arctic Mountain Adventure is available to view at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGFOZLecjTc.

Digiman is baby-sitting his niece and nephew for the weekend, but things go horribly wrong when he sends them out on an arctic mountain adventure. Never fear trusty viewers, PLATO, the Planets Preservation Planning tool, comes to the rescue to show Digiman the error of his ways.

Other editions of these popular videos are available here http://www.youtube.com/user/wepreserve

Metadata Forum
At the Open Repositories Conference 2010 last week in Madrid the Metadata Forum was officially launched. A new initiative, run by UKOLN at the University of Bath and funded by JISC, the Metadata Forum is planning four face-to-face meetings throughout the UK and ongoing conversations online where anyone who has an interest in metadata can ask for help, share experiences and learn from others. The Forum is open to everyone, from novice to expert and anyone in between who deals with metadata in their day-to-day work.

Get involved by following the Forum blog - http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/themetadataforum or following the Forum on Twitter – @MetadataForum

SWORD v2.0: Deposit Lifecycle white paper
http://sword2depositlifecycle.jiscpress.org/

The aim of this paper is to stimulate discussion around introducing more complete treatment of "deposit lifecycle" management of objects in digital repositories, and to propose the next small steps in this direction. Abstract:

"SWORD is a hugely successful JISC project which has kindled repository interoperability and built a community around the software and the problem space. It explicitly deals only with creating new repository resources by package deposit a simple case which is at the root of its success but also its key limitation. This next version of SWORD will push the standard towards supporting full repository deposit lifecycles by using update, retrieve and delete extensions to the specification. This will enable the repository to be integrated into a broader range of systems in the scholarly environment, by supporting an increased range of behaviours and use cases."

delicious

2010-06-29T10:01:00.005+01:00

The WRN team now have a delicious site available at http://delicious.com/welshrepositorynetwork

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages centrally. For more information about social bookmarking a useful explanation is available on Wikipedia.

Here in the WRN offices we started to use delicious to gather together sites of potential interest to us internally as a project team, but we've quickly come to realise that having access to these links would also be of use to the wider repository community within Wales.

There are various ways of exploring content on delicious, I find one of the most useful is to use the tags list from the right hand menu to look at sites gathered together under various themes. This will quickly take you out and beyond the sites we've gathered at WRN into the wider collection of URLs from the whole site.

As with many other Web 2.0 tools making them useful and developing a useful community actually takes a lot of effort - and to be honest our work on populating the site with links to date has been sporadic. It is another of those changes to the way we work and think that doesn't yet happen automatically. However, with time we hope to improve this situation and keep adding useful sites as we come across them.

If you know of any sites that would be useful to add to our page, or if you would like to become an active contributor to our site, then please just drop us a line via the usual email wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

Advocacy discussion: barriers and solutions

2010-06-11T12:14:00.004+01:00

As part of the Repository Stream at the Gregynog Colloquium we held a discussion session on the hurdles faced by Repository Administrators when trying to encourage academic buy-in to their systems. These have been listed below and grouped into topics.

As part of the discussions we also suggested solutions for each of the obstacles. These appear after each problem raised in a different colour. The solutions are by no means exhaustive and there are some gaps.

Please add comments and suggestions to the list below, and suggest advocacy ideas that have worked for you. It is hoped this exchange of ideas will aid both our WRN community and the repository community as a whole.

Perception of time and effort required

No time
Demonstrate ease of deposit. Video materials to demo deposit using academic champions. Practice reduces time. Look into automatic completion APIs for repository.
Extra admin work
Mandate. Suggest using admin staff or PhD students to help- good practice for new researchers.
Backlog of research will take too much time to enter
Offer self-deposit to relieve backlog then encourage self-deposit. Suggest using admin staff or PhD students to help.

Benefit of repository interaction

What’s in it for me?- Apathetic to the process
Education- more widespread audience; greater recognition; higher/ faster/ sustained citation rates. Demonstration of RAE impact. Use of peers as champions. Video materials?
The paper is already published- anyone who wants to read it already has
More widespread audience- publically funded research available to whole of the public beyond subscription barriers.
Takes time to see benefit
Difference between print and electronic world?

Perception of repository importance

Lack of integration with other Uni systems and processes
Top-level buy-in to push for integration/ Mandates
Repository is an archival end point
Education on benefits- use as Management Information tool
Perceived value of system through lack of dedicated staff time
Top-level buy-in to fund positions to administer repository. Use further staff network- subject liaison; research administrators- to spread load and form experts for each school/ collection.

Copyright and IPR issues

Unsure of copyright status in papers
Use of SHERPA RoMEO/ include API on repository front page
Unsure of what was signed away with publishing license
Education. Feedback from academics to publishers. UKCoRR MoU
No longer have copies of different versions
Education
Worries about plagiarism and IPR protection
No real difference between print and online world. Getting the paper out on the web and recognised as author’s work should counteract plagiarism risk. Benefits associated with citation rates and recognition should outweigh IPR risks.

Conflicts with traditional publishing

Publishing within a prestigious journal the priority
Use of OA funds to encourage OA publishing
Older research is no longer felt relevant
Evidence of older PhD work being requested for digitisation as now informs modern research.

Other issues

Collection policy confusion- what can be accepted
Have clear collection policy stated within repository site FAQ
Can the repository take different file types?
Have clear collection policy stated within repository site FAQ- the repository can store diff file types but can end users access them easily?/ Preservation.
Don’t want to make draft version publically available

Gregynog Repository Stream

2010-06-11T11:38:00.005+01:00

The presentations delivered during the Repository Strand at this week's Gregynog Colloquium are now available online on our project website or follow the relevant links below.

The Power of the Mandate Sue Hodges, University of Salford.
Research Publishing at Swansea University Alex Roberts, Swansea University.
Research management system at the University of Glamorgan Leanne Beevers and Neil Williams, University of Glamorgan.
Developing a repository: caring, sharing and living the dream Misha Jepson, Glyndŵr University.
Encouraging author self- deposit at Cardiff University Tracey Andrews and Scott Hill, Cardiff University.
Using statistics as an advocacy tool Nicky Cashman, Aberystwyth University.
Advocacy: the theory Jackie Knowles, WRN.

New IR Cross Search Service launched in Ireland

2010-06-08T11:22:00.003+01:00

RIAN is a newly launched cross-search service for content held within 7 HEI IR's in Ireland- DCU, NUIG, NUIM, TCD, UCC, UCD, UL. An outcome of a Strategic Innovations Fund project, it was sponsored by the Irish Universities Association (IUA ) and funded by the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA ).

The aim of the service is 'to harvest to one portal the contents of the Institutional Repositories of the seven university libraries, in order to make Irish research material more freely accessible, and to increase the research profiles of individual researchers and their institutions.'

DSpace Add-Ons

2010-06-03T10:16:00.004+01:00

The following are descriptions of a range of DSpace add-ons available to install which provide additional functionality to the software.

Commenting
The commenting feature brings informal communication capabilities to the DSpace environment. A threaded forum, or comments stream, can be attached to any web-page, community, collection, submitted item or e-person within DSpace. The add-on allows comments to be inserted by both anonymous users and authenticated ones while functionality for reviewing/moderating comments is also provided.

An example (in Portuguese) of comments appearing below a collection.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x

Controlled Vocabulary/Ontology
This add-on applies a subject classification system of the institutions choice to their DSpace instance. Once implemented the user chooses from the predefined taxonomy of keywords to describe items of information that are being submitted to the repository and that same taxonomy is used to find and access items held in the repository.

An example (in Portuguese) of a subject classification system in use.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x

Dublin Core Meta Toolkit
The Dublin Core Meta Toolkit gives DSpace administrators the ability to convert large amounts of information from their desktop database programs into DSpace compatible Dublin Core metadata. The toolkit provides a number of out-of-the-box database structures to ease data collection as well as enabling users to create custom converters for existing databases. The Toolkit is ideal for converting formats from Microsoft Access, MySQL and comma delimited value (CSV).

Compatible with DSpace 1.5.1

Embargo
Content submitted to a repository may be restricted by laws, policies, or contractual obligations that require the submitter not to publish or enable public access to the content for a period of time.This add-on allows DSpace administrators to build in functionality to handle embargoed items in the workflow. It allows for the metadata of the embargoed item to be indexed and viewed, but the full text of the item cannot be retrieved while the embargo is in force.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x, 1.5.x and 1.6

Format validator and virus check
This add-on provides rough-and-ready format checking by identifying that the file/bitstream extension matches formats verifiable by JHOVE. Currently DSpace accepts a deposit's file extension as gospel, so a user could tack a .txt extension onto a GIF and DSpace would assign the incorrect format to the file based on that incorrect extension. It also checks the file for the presence of viruses.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x

Recommendation
This DSpace content-based recommendation feature automatically shows links to articles within the repository that a user is likely to be interested in by mapping items related to the document currently being visualized by the user. Similar to functionality seen on Amazon this feature can greatly improve user experience.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x

Request Copy
This add-on creates a semi-automated mechanism whereby would-be users can request and authors can email an individual copy of a full-text deposited within the repository whose full-text access privileges are set to restricted.

The purpose of this feature is to increase both the content deposited in an IR and its immediate usability by providing a way to accommodate the (frequently unfounded) worries of authors and their institutions about copyright infringement during any publisher embargo periods on public self-archiving.

The link is provided on all non-OA items and activates a form where the user requester must enter his/her email address and name, and may add a comment, and press a 'Request-a-copy' button. An email is sent to the depositor and the email message contains a token. Using that token, the author may reply, by just clicking in one of the two buttons available: 'Send Copy', 'Don't send copy'.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x

Semantic Search for DSpace
Semantic Search allows intelligent search of DSpace content, using Semantic Web technologies and performs knowledge discovery on DSpace metadata. Semantic Search uses the science of meaning in language, to produce highly relevant search results.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x

Statistics
This add-on allows gathering, processing and presenting usage, content and administrative statistics from the repository. The system is based on components that can easily be configured, changed or extended, to respond to different information needs.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x (JSPUI)

Tombstoning
The add-on allows a tombstone to be added when an item is withdrawn from the repository. The user selects from 3 reasons for withdrawing the item: 1. Removed from view by legal order; 2. Removed from view by the [authority doing removal]; 3. Removed from view at request of the author.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x

Further details about this range of options are available here. Any WRN partner interested in discussing or investigating any of these DSpace add-ons should contact the team using the usual address wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

Statistical Evaluation

2010-05-26T11:59:00.005+01:00

The WRN project team is currently looking in some depth at evaluating our project activities. We are concerned with gathering both non-numerical qualitative data to analyse about our activities (stories/opinions and narratives from our users) alongside some more quantitative statistical measures about repositories and their use across Wales.

Surprisingly, the collection of the statistical aspect of our evaluation data - something we originally envisaged as being the quick and easy stuff to generate - has proved to be quite problematic. Establishing a base line set of measures has been difficult with varying data coming out of everyone's systems and a lack of consistency in obtaining measures for central recording purposes. Even the most basic measure of all, i.e. how many deposits are recorded each quarter in each repository, can be difficult to obtain and we are only just managing to make this measure something we accurately record in 100% of the repositories across Wales.

So, while we hear lots of stories about the power of statistics and the help they can offer in making a case for a repository, it seems that we still have some work to do to convince people it is worth the effort of setting up robust statistical measures. We thought we'd try and address this by providing information about a selection of basic options open to most repository managers. The following information, from the Digital Repositories InfoKit, provides an overview of some of the most commonly employed methods of collecting statistics:

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/repositories/management-framework/usage-statistics

Any WRN partner interested in reviewing their statistics and collection methods, or needing assistance in setting up any of the tools mentioned here, should contact the project team via the usual email at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

CRIS Event Cafe Society Write Up - Group 4: Data Quality

2010-05-17T10:57:00.004+01:00

CRIS Event Cafe Society Write Up - Group 3: Stakeholder Engagement

2010-05-17T10:48:00.004+01:00

CRIS Event Cafe Society Write Up - Group 2: DIY v. Commercial Solutions

2010-05-17T10:39:00.005+01:00

CRIS Event Cafe Society Write Up - Group 1: Drivers

2010-05-17T10:26:00.006+01:00

At the JISC/ARMA Repositories and CRIS event 'Learning How to Play Nicely' held at the Rose Bowl, Leeds Met University on Friday 7th May the afternoon was dedicated to a cafe society discussion session. Four topics were explored by delegates and over the course of four blog posts we are disseminating the facilitator reports from each session.

Please use the comment option below to contribute or comment on these discussion topics.

Group 1 - Drivers
Facilitator: Andy Mc Gregor, JISC

Aim
This session was designed to explore the issues that are driving the development of research management systems, processes and policies in universities.
This document reports on the issues raised during that session by the many people who joined in over the 2 hour course of the discussion.
During the session we looked at the drivers, then considered the ways that institutions were choosing to address those issues and finally used these approaches to develop a rough and ready action plan for institutions wishing to look at research management.

Drivers
REF – the Research Excellence Framework was a clear priority for many of those present.

Efficiencies – many people felt that a joined up and embedded research management system would stop effort being duplicated and make some tasks much easier than they are at present freeing staff time to be spent on other tasks.

Funding – a good research management system could help institutions understand, monitor and manage research funding more effectively and enable it to target bids for funding in a more managed way.

Funder mandates – many funders are mandating the storage of research outputs and research data, a research management system could help institutions comply with such mandates.

Legal compliance – a research management system could help institutions manage compliance with data protection and freedom of information requirements in a more efficient and joined up way, greatly reducing staff time that needs to be spent on these tasks.

Business information – the information held by a research management system could provide valuable information about the operation of the institution such as identifying successful research clusters, or areas for potential collaboration. This would enable the institution to provide more focused support to researchers.

Business processes – the research management system could help institutions refine some of the processes and workflows for research and administrative tasks. This would make it easier for researchers to manage the administrative part of their research. It could also make it easier for researchers to fulfil obligations to funders and could support a more effective link between institutional and funder information and systems.

Benefiting research – a research management system could use the information about the institutions research to provide useful services to researchers. This could be something like a directory of expertise or a service to explore research happening in other institutions.

Open access – open access to research outputs can provide greater access to the literature for a researcher as well as enabling a greater number of people to access their research outputs. While this is an important driver, to some extent it is a result of some of the other drivers.

Collaboration (communities of practice) – a well managed research management system could help support researchers in finding suitable people to collaborate with and support the identification of communities of practice. This is an area where research management systems could link effectively with virtual research environments.

Knowledge exchange – having details of an institutions research on an easy to use website could help with knowledge exchange with business and with other nations.

In thinking about ways to address these drivers it is important to focus on the key reasons that an institution needs to implement a research management system. There is a danger that focusing too closely on one specific driver could produce a system that is only good for that particular purpose and does not meet the wider needs of the institution. This is especially serious when thinking about the REF as specifying a solution too closely aligned to the ref may produce a system that is not suitable for future research assessment purposes.

While it was clear from the discussion that the impetus for the development or revamp of research management in institutions was coming from senior managers, it was also clear that it was members of the research office, library, and IT departments of institutions that were steering the specific nature of the implementation in each institution.

Responding to Drivers
Once the drivers were identified, the group moved on to discussing how the drivers could be addressed and what tasks were important in setting up a research management system. To help structure this session and to ensure that the tasks were grounded in the reality of the institutional setting we categorised each task into three cost categories: tasks that would not require extra funding and could be accomplished with existing resources, tasks that would cost a moderate amount of money (e.g. £10,000-£50,000) or tasks that would cost in excess of £100,000.

No cost tasks

Building relationships – it was clear from the whole day that building effective relationships was a key success criteria in developing a research management system in an institution. Effective relationships between senior managers, researchers, research managers, librarians, IT, and other relevant systems are an essential early task that can be achieved without any extra resources. However, maintaining those relationships may take a lot of time and effort and therefore may need some extra resources.

Embedding the system in the institutional processes – to ensure successful uptake of any system, a number of people suggested that the system needed to be embedded in the institutional processes that affect researchers such as assessment and promotion. The group disagreed on whether this was a no cost or moderate cost task with some people feeling that the relationship building and advocacy/training that would be required would push this into the moderate cost bracket. However it was also noted that once the initial hump of getting the system embedded into institutional practice was surmounted then it could make complying with institutional requirements easier and quicker for researchers and therefore lower institutional costs.

Moderate cost tasks

Planning – obviously there is a fairly large planning overhead for implementing a research management system in an institution. This often involves a range of staff and is quite time consuming and so comes at a cost to an institution.
Publicity and advocacy – it is highly likely that any new research management system would require researchers to change their working practices, therefore significant advocacy and publicity would be required to make sure researchers were aware of the system and how it would affect and help them. This is a resource intensive process in terms of staff effort and some materials costs therefore it would require a moderate amount of resources dedicated to it.

Training – a related task to publicity and advocacy is training of researchers and administrators in the use of the system.

Understanding institutional requirements and systems – before an effective research management system can be designed a good understanding of institutional requirements, systems, existing processes and people involved must be developed. This will involve a range of departments and roles and could be quite time consuming but it is an essential step in designing a system that will fulfil institutional requirements.

User consultation – just as it’s important to understand institutional requirements and systems it is also vital to understand the needs and current practices of the people who will end up using this system. This is important in making sure the system meets their needs but it is also important in getting early buy in from users and in managing their expectations. This is a very important part of the planning and implementation process and the group concurred that this was worth dedicating a decent amount of resources to.

Developer time – this is essential if institutions choose to build a home grown system However it is also important if institutions choose to buy a system in as developer time will be needed to ensure the system links well with other institutional systems. This doesn’t come cheap and can be a significant commitment. One group member reported that they had been told that their research management system would require 400 hours of developer time, which would probably push it into the high cost bracket.

Data entry and quality checking – It is important not to underestimate the cost of data entry into the new system, both in terms of set up and in terms of ongoing cost. Even if data is bought in or cheap data entry effort is procured then there will still be an associated cost in quality checking that needs to be supported.

High cost tasks

This category was slightly more speculative than the others as many people in the group did not expect to receive high levels of funding.

Build systems – A number of people believed that this amount of money would enable their institution to build a system that could give their institution competitive advantage over rival institutions. However a note of caution was sounded here in that there may not be a competitive advantage in building your own system and building your own system may unnecessarily duplicate effort occurring in other institutions and in fact there may be advantages to collaborating with other institutions to build an open source system. Competitive advantage is more likely to be realised through the effective embedding of the system and the way it is used rather than building a unique system.

Best of breed products – given this amount of money a number of people suggested the best way it could be used was to buy best of breed products.

Staff – getting the staffing resource correct for any research management system was identified as a key success criteria and a concern for many of the group members. They were concerned with ensuring that the right staff were employed to implement a system and that those staff were then sustained by the institution where required.

An institutional scale data review - this was a scaled up version of the institutional requirements task mentioned under the moderate costs heading. Many group members felt that a really thorough review of an institutional requirement, the data that would be managed by any system and the requirements for managing that data was a step they would ideally like to take before designing a system. Many felt that CERIF could help here.

Action plan
The final part of the session was spent discussing a possible action plan. The following headings were as far as we got. They are listed in chronological order:
1. Relationships – build relationships with all relevant stakeholders.

2. Feasibility – understand the system’s users, the high level requirements for the system and identify a rough cost. (

3. Define institutional need and sustainability and get buy in from senior managers.

4. Produce a plan

5. Consult with users to gather requirements (this would need to start with a stakeholder analysis)

6. Analyse requirements gathered and report back to users with outline specification (it is probably desirable to make this process iterative and to continue the iterations throughout the building process).

7. Produce specification

8. Decide how to proceed and then move to tender or building process

9. Build it

10. Embed it (this process really started with the user consultation and needs to continue throughout the project). This will include training where appropriate.
11. Communication - this is likely to run throughout the project and have two processes:
a. Communicating over the tasks in the project with the relevant stakeholders
b. Wider dissemination and communication related to embedding the system through advocacy, traning etc.

12. Sustainability handover – this needs to include:
a. Built in review process for the software (perhaps every 4 years)
b. Ongoing support including technical and managerial.

CRIS event blog write-ups

2010-05-12T10:56:00.003+01:00

Richard Jones, Head of Repository Systems at Symplectic Ltd. and a member of the JISC Sonex working group has created two blog posts about our JISC/ARMA Repositories and CRIS event 'Learning How to Play Nicely' held at the Rose Bowl, Leeds Met University last Friday 7th May. Richard attended the event as an exhibitor of Symplectic.

Learning How to Play Nicely- Presentations online

2010-05-11T16:59:00.006+01:00

Many thanks to our delegates, speakers and exhibitors for making last Friday's (7th May) JISC/ ARMA Repositories and CRIS event 'Learning how to play nicely' such a success.

For those unable to attend the event at the Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University, or for those who would like to recap, the presentations from the day along with some recorded sessions are now available from our website at http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/events/cris/presentations.html.

Further outputs from the day will be made available shortly- Watch this space!

Gregynog Repositories Stream - Programme now available

2010-05-10T10:24:00.006+01:00

We have now announced the detailed programme for the forthcoming repositories stream at the 2010 Gregynog Colloquium. As you will see we have a detailed programme in place with plenty of variety on offer.

Tuesday 8th June 2010

15.30-17.00 WRN Business Meeting

Wednesday 9th June 2010

9.15 - 10.00 The power of mandates, Sue Hodges, University of Salford

10.00 - 10.30 Publications Management System at Swansea University - Alex Roberts, Swansea University

10.30 - 11.00 Research Management System at the University of Glamorgan - Leanne Beevers & Neil Williams, Glamorgan University

11.00 - 11.30 Tea

11.30 - 12.00 Developing a repository, caring, sharing and living the dream – Misha Jepson, Glyndwr University

12.00 - 12.30 Encouraging Author self – deposit at Cardiff - Tracey Andrews & Scott Hill, Cardiff University

12.30 - 13.00 Using statistics as an advocacy tool Nicky Cashman, Aberystwyth University

13.00 - 14.00 Lunch

2.00 - 2.30 Repository Advocacy: The theory - WRN staff

2.30 - 3.30 Advocacy Café Society session

3 tables will be laid out each with a facilitator and a topic to discuss, participants are moved on to a new topic every 15 minutes with a 15 minute slot at the end to feedback and present findings. Suggested topics:
A)What are the main obstacles to gathering content in your repository?
B)What are the main misconceptions your stakeholders have when it comes to your repository?
C)Put yourself in the shoes of an objector and outline the main arguments against having a repository?

3.30 - 4.00 Tea

4.00 - 5.00 Advocacy in Action: Workshop/exercise. Participants are asked to work in groups to produce some broad brush repository promotional materials.

As in previous years the WRN will be sponsoring places at the colloquium for up to 2 participants per partner institution. Further details have been sent out via the usual mailing list.

We looking forward to seeing you there!

New article published

2010-05-10T09:46:00.002+01:00

Earlier this year I was asked to write an article for Program: electronic library and information systems about the ongoing work of the Welsh Repository Network. I am pleased to say that this has now been published:

Knowles, J. (2010), Collaboration nation: the building of the Welsh Repository Network, Program: electronic library and information systems, 44(2), 98-108

Link to published article

Link to final author version in Cadair

Happy reading!

Preservation for Repository Practitioners

2010-04-21T09:59:00.004+01:00

Aston Business School Birmingham, Thursday 27th May 2010.

In conjunction with the Repositories Support Project (RSP) and the Enhancing Repository Infrastructure in Scotland project (ERIS), we here at WRN are organising a free, one- day workshop at the Aston Business School Conference Centre Birmingham on Thursday 27th May, looking at preservation issues and repositories.

We have created a hands-on, practical programme with preservation tool presentations from the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the PLANETS project as well as facilitated discussion sessions looking in to preservation issues and your repository, and how to construct an action plan and preservation policy to use in your institution.

For a draft programme and booking please see the RSP event page.

Glyndŵr score a century!

2010-04-20T16:48:00.004+01:00

GURO- Glyndŵr University's research repository can now boast over 100 items!

GURO's content has increased by 1350% over the last 6 months bringing GURO's grand total of items to 116. Over half of these items are also full text.

Keep up the good work Glyndŵr!

If you would like to find out more about GURO please contact Misha Jepson, Repository Administrator at repository@glyndwr.ac.uk.

Mendeley - Organize research, collaborate, and discover new knowledge

2010-04-07T16:54:00.002+01:00

I recently attended Dev8D, an event funded by JISC with the aim of bringing together developers from higher education and other sectors in order to learn from one another and ultimately create better, smarter technology for research.

Part of the event included Expert Sessions where latest developments and solutions were presented. Amongst these was an overview of Mendeley - a free research management tool for desktop and web that has been described as a fusion of last.fm and iTunes for research papers!

Mendeley allows researchers to manage their libraries by automatically extracting metadata from researcher papers (in PDF format) which can then be used to create citations and bibliographies. Full-text searches are also supported and users can 'mark up' documents with comments on specific sections. But the real power of Mendeley lies in the social networking features and collective data gathered from users. Groups of like minded researchers can be created for sharing and collaboratively tagging and annotating research papers. The service also provides statistics about research papers, authors and topics allowing users to get recommendations and explore research trends.

The growth in users has been staggering since its release in 2008 - currently there are approximately 8000 institutions using Mendeley with 22,000 research groups collaborating and over 18,000,000 documents in people's libraries! It is quickly becoming one of the largest academic databases around and with funding recently secured from JISC and Europe, Mendeley propose to allow institutions to harvest documents deposited by their academics.

If you'd like to take a closer look, you can sign up and download Mendeley for free.

A blog about a blog

2010-03-24T10:28:00.003Z

Valerie McCutcheon, Operations Manager in Research and Enterprise, University of Glasgow has begun a new blog 'Research Outcomes: Managing Resaerch Outputs and Impact.'

This blog aims to "tell the world what we are doing at the University of Glasgow re Research Outputs and specifically RCUK requirements." Valerie is updating the blog regularly and it provides an insight into developments in this area with RCUK.

JorumOpen: OA learning and teaching resource repository

2010-03-24T10:26:00.002Z

Based on DSpace software, Jorum now offers an open access learning and teaching resource repository JorumOpen. This new service allows access to resources licensed under Creative Commons, free to anyone, worldwide. JorumOpen compliments Jorum’s original service JorumUK which although free to use by members of the UK HE and FE communities, required an institutional subscription to access and deposit resources.

Having created a number of learning objects for the repository community, the WRN thought it would be apposite, to aid further distribution, to deposit these into JorumOpen. We had already deposited them into our institutional repository CADAIR. However, when searching for the best collection within JorumOpen to deposit them in, we made a discovery- one had already been deposited! Unfortunately, several elements of the metadata record were incorrect including the depositor passing themselves off as the publisher. In fairness to JorumOpen they were extremely cooperative in trying to amend the record, eventually taking it down so that I could create a new record for the item. Evidence of a take-down policy in action!

Item records for all three of our current learning objects are now available within JorumOpen. The registration process for deposit was simple and live deposit was instant. This is a good service to recommend to any keen individuals within your institution who wish to make any of their learning objects available to the wide world if your current IR collection policy does not include resources of this type.

Learning how to play nicely: Repositories and CRIS event - now open for booking

2010-03-16T10:55:00.002Z

The WRN team are pleased to announce the following forthcoming event:

Learning how to play nicely: Repositories and CRIS (Current Research Information Systems)
Date: Friday 7th May, 2010
Venue: Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University
Cost: Free

For a draft programme, more information and a link to the booking form please visit our web site at
http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/events/cris/

University OA Policy JISC Report

2010-02-26T11:40:00.003Z

Report title: ‘Modelling scholarly communication options: costs and benefits for universities’

JISC have just released a commissioned report looking at how to build a business case for an Open Access policy within universities. The report, authored by Alma Swan, ‘is based on different types of university. It shows how universities might reduce costs, how they can calculate these savings and their greater contribution to society by following an Open Access route.’

'Neil Jacobs, programme manager at JISC said, “This is the first time that universities will have a method and practical examples from which to build a business case for Open Access and to calculate the cost to them of the scholarly communications process.” '

The report is available to download from the JISC repository at http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/442.

Other useful resources from JISC for those institutions who are considering the options of OA publishing and an OA publishing policy are:

(Information from: O’Brien, R. (2010). News Release: How to build a business case for an Open Access policy. Message posted to JISC-ANNOUNCE electronic mailing list, archived at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind1002&L=JISC-ANNOUNCE&T=0&F=&S=&P=7380 )

New WRN Learning Objects

2010-02-24T16:03:00.000Z

The WRN are pleased to announce the launch of their first learning objects focussing on metadata and repositories, given a sneak preview at last Friday’s UKCoRR Meeting:

We are aiming to create a suite of learning objects looking at metadata use with different repository item types so look out for announcements of further resources available soon.

Already available via the WRN website is the first of the WRN learning objects:

‘Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations with Intellectual Property Rights.’

We are looking for feedback on these learning objects to aid us with the design and content of future resources. An online survey has been created for the evaluation of each of the learning objects above, the link to which can be found within the last page of the object itself.

UKCoRR Meeting- 19th February 2010

2010-02-24T15:58:00.005Z

Venue: University of Leicester

On Friday 19th I attended the UKCoRR Meeting hosted by the University of Leicester at their VERY impressive David Wilson Library (a clear picture of what can be done if you have £32 million available!). I had been invited by the UKCoRR Committee to speak about the work of the WRN and more specifically about the tools we have created (learning objects) and the services we are looking to offer (NLW e-theses harvesting; events). A copy of the presentation is available from CADAIR.

The meeting itself boasted a full day of presentations from members and also offered a great opportunity for networking with others in the repository community- especially those with hands-on, practical experience of repository issues.

The day opened with a Welcome address from Louise Jones, Director of Library Services who provided highlights of the achievements and future plans for the repository at Leicester:

mandates for both e-theses and all academic research outputs;
Research Information Management System bid in conjunction with the University’s Research Office;
hiring of a Bibliometrician to aid with REF/ research reporting;
plans for an Open Educational Resources repository- named OTA I think (?).

This was followed by presentations from Jenny Delasalle, UKCoRR Chair and Dr. Nicky Cashman, UKCoRR Secretary (and AU Repository Advisor). Nicky talked about her experiences as a Repository Advisor so far and highlighted the current ‘Opt-in’ repository deposit aspect of AU’s e-theses submission mandate and how this may conflict with EThOS digitisation requests in the future. This prompted a small discussion about how e-theses mandates had been handled in other institutions. At Leicester, permission has to be sought from past students before a thesis is made available to EThOS for digitisation. This is similar to the situation in Southampton where students have had to be contacted through the Alumni Office before their already digitised theses can be made available via the repository. Another institution uses the Freedom of Information Act to fall back on if a previously embargoed thesis is subsequently requested by EThOS for digitisation.

The next presentation came from Nick Sheppard and Wendy Luker at Leeds Met University about their recently completed Bibliosight project. The project was looking at streamlining the method for populating repositories using metadata from WoK’s WSLite API. The code developed by the project is available as a JAR file. A query to WoK will return an xml page of results which can then by converted to xslt where extra fields can then be added. These results can then be deposited into a repository via SWORD. There are highlighted problems with the API however:

only certain fields within the records are returned, abstracts are not included as WoK are not able to grant a license for their transfer;
it is not possible to distinguish between the publication type of the items returned;
a limit of 100 records return per query. If more records are found a second query specifically requesting records 101-x/200 has to be made.

The attempt at a live demonstration on the day also highlighted that IP authentication may prove a problem when using the API. It was unclear whether this was from WoK’s end or something within the developed code. The mechanisms of how to populate a repository with WoK records has been the focus of the Bibliosight project rather than the management issues surrounding it so the copyright implications related to data re-use have yet to be considered. Please see Nick’s blog post about the meeting and to view his presentation.

Gareth Johnson, our host at the University of Leicester, gave a very entertaining presentation about his experiences as University of Leicester Repository Manager; a copy of his presentation is available from SlideShare. An interesting anecdote he raised in his presentation related to commercial bodies’ use of an institution’s repository and its content for vetting researchers. If a commercial body is looking to approach an academic to collaborate with them in a research project the availability of that academic’s full-text gives them an insight into the quality of research being produced by that individual. A useful element to include in any repository advocacy! Gareth has also created a useful commentary of the meeting as it happened available from the UoL Library Blog.

Another useful presentation came from Jane Smith and Peter Millington from Nottingham looking at the additions that have been made to SHERPA RoMEO and its cross-over with SHERPA JULIET. Jane highlighted that although one of the new additions to RoMEO was an ‘Updated on’ field to records they still did not have the capability to display all past versions of a publisher’s open access policy. They do however, store paper copies of each incarnation of a policy they are aware of and copies can be made available on request to romeo@sherpa.ac.uk.

Hopefully all the presentations from the day will be available via the UKCoRR website.

Please see the UKCoRR membership pages for info on how to join.

Heading in the right direction - new statistics now in!

2010-02-16T10:53:00.004Z

I have finished processing the latest batch of statistics from our project partners and I am happy to report we have seen an improvement in the total growth rates for our repositories for the three months October through to December 2009.

Growth rate Jul - Sep 2009 = 12.47%
Growth rate Oct - Dec 2009 = 13.84%

The figure we use to calculate these rates is the total number of items appearing in each of the Welsh repositories. Detailed figures are as follows:

Keep up the good work everyone!

Digital Preservation Roadshow, Aberystwyth

2010-01-27T15:46:00.004Z

Last Friday Jackie and I presented at the CyMAL / Society of Archivists Digital Preservation Roadshow held at the National Library of Wales (NLW) . The event was aimed at all practitioners who were involved with the management of digital records, with delegates coming from different organisations within the public sector including Welsh regional archive services, Universities and the NLW.

Our presentation looked jointly at the approaches taken to digital preservation within the repository community and how preservation is being put into action within our e-theses harvesting workpackage, being conducted with the NLW. The presentation that followed ours was delivered by our NLW partner, Glen Robson, who discussed what was going to happen to the harvested e-theses records once they had reached the NLW repository or DAMS (digital asset management system) as they call it.

Other interesting presentations during the day included:

A forecast of the necessary skills needed by future practitioners to manage and preserve digital records, given by Kirsten Ferguson-Boucher, Records Management Lecturer at the Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University.

An entertaining and engaging presentation on METS and other standards including PREMIS by Lyn Lewis Dafis, Head of Metadata and Digitisation Unit, NLW. Actually making these complicated metadata standards understandable for the non-techies like me!

An overview of the digital preservation policy planning at Cardiff University by Sarah Phillips, Records Manager.

Short description of a useful tool to assess file format suitability in terms of preservation developed by the National Library of the Netherlands and utilised by the NLW from Ioan Isaac-Richards.

The Society of Archivists hopes to have the presentations for the day available via the Digital Preservation Roadshows 2009- 10 webpage soon.

Now planning - Repositories and CRIS event

2010-01-26T10:41:00.003Z

The WRN team are currently in the process of planning a repositories and CRIS event. This one day event will be one of the programme meetings for the JISC Inf11 programme and will explore the close relationship between CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and institutional repositories. We hope to be able to co-host this meeting with representatives from ARMA the professional association for research managers and administrators in the UK.

The programme and details are at an early stage and we are inviting feedback from our community to help us shape the event. We currently have an online discussion page available at http://infteamjisc.slinkset.com/items/Repositories_and_CRIS_event

Please join in and let us know what you think!

Register to update your details on ROAR

2010-01-11T14:20:00.001Z

It is now possible to register for your own account on ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) to enter and update details of your repository on the service. Through JISC funding the ROAR service has now been reworked into a repository itself so that ‘collecting, updating and editing information about repositories is now part of a familiar repository workflow.’

The stated aim of ROAR ‘is to promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the world.’ The service provides:

- A catalogue of individual repositories and their attributes
- Repository listings by location, purpose and software platform
- Analyses of the growth over time of individual repositories or groups of repositories
- Searching for repositories by various properties
- Searching the contents of groups of repositories using a Google Customised Search
- The option to share new repository information with OpenDOAR
- Access to the OAI-PMH data obtained from the Celestial harvester

Visit the ROAR registration page now to create your new account and promote your repository!

Official launch of UWIC’s institutional repository

2010-01-08T15:16:00.001Z

Last month marked the launch of UWIC’s institutional repository. The launch consisted of presentations, live demos of the repository, and opportunities for attending academics’ to deposit their own research. RSP advocacy material was used and disseminated at the launch. Three, separate sessions were held at each of the University’s campuses. Since the launch there has been an increase in user account registrations and an increase in deposit enquiries.

If you would like to find out more about UWIC’s institutional repository please contact Helen Thomas, Repository Administrator at dspace@uwic.ac.uk.

If you would like any help or ideas for what you could do to launch your repository or further raise its profile within your institution please contact the WRN team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

Preservation event planning

2010-01-07T13:47:00.003Z

In conjunction with our sister projects RSP and ERIS, the WRN are planning some one-day events looking at digital preservation and repositories. The programme will specifically target repository practitioners and will be aimed at beginners. In order to ensure as many people as possible are able to attend we are tentatively planning to repeat the event in various locations around the UK. Provisional dates are under discussion for Cardiff, Birmingham and Edinburgh in May 2010.

We are very keen that these events are of real practical use to the repository community, so in order to help us plan theses events, we would appreciate it if you could take the time to complete this quick question.

If you would like to register your interest for one of these events, please visit http://surveys.polldaddy.com/s/92F89A8D8D2C15BE.

Many thanks in advance for your help!

Digital Preservation Roadshow: NLW, Friday 22nd January

2010-01-06T17:01:00.003Z

The Society of Archivists in association with CyMAL are bringing a Digital Preservation Roadshow event to the National Library of Wales (NLW) on Friday 22nd January. This roadshow is one of the last in a series that have been held at various locations around the UK and Ireland. The aims of the events have been 'to raise awareness of the issues surrounding digital preservation, to demonstrate that there are solutions that don't involve spending large amounts of money, and to show how to take the first, small, incremental steps in this field.'

Jackie and I will be giving a presentation at the event regarding repositories and preservation, the WRN project and the e-theses harvesting workpackage. There will also be presentations from NLW staff exploring the strategies they employ to preserve the digital items that the library holds, including a specific presentation from Glen Robson regarding 'Harvesting and DAMS' which is of particular interest in light of the e-theses harvesting workpackage.

Other speakers at the event inlude:

Tim Gollins, National Archives
William Kilbride, Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) Executive
Sarah Phillips, University Records Manager, Cardiff University

An event programme is available to download from the Digital Preservation Roadshows 2009- 10 webpage.

Attendance at the roadshow is free but numbers are limited. To book a place, fill out the booking form available from the CyMAL event page and send it to cymal@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Merry Christmas from the WRN

2009-12-18T09:34:00.008Z

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our project partners. Thank you for your support and co-operation throughout the year without which the Welsh Repository Network Project would not have been as successful as it has been. Hopefully next year will be as much of a success with progress being made on the MDB and e-theses harvesting workpackages. We are also planning some new training programmes for the New Year that we hope you will find engaging and full of ideas that you can take back to apply at your institutions. We’re looking forward to coming to see you all soon but until then, best wishes for the festive break. The WRN Team.

Official launch of Glyndŵr University Research Online (GURO)

2009-12-14T14:45:00.003Z

23rd- 28th November was the official launch week of Glyndŵr University’s institutional repository GURO. Awareness of GURO was raised in the launch week by various methods, including:

An all staff email containing a short introduction and link to the repository website

Placement of a link to the repository on the University’s homepage

Two drop in sessions held for academic staff to come and ask questions

Distribution of promotional leaflets and posters

Presentation at an academic research forum

Attendance at a researcher’s breakfast group (think tank)

An entry in the University’s general newsletter and the Library newsletter.

Positive responses were received by researchers, students and support workers in relation to the repository; and a snapshot look at the repository stats showed a 39% increase in item downloads during the week of the launch compared to the previous week.

If you would like to find out more about GURO please contact Misha Jepson, Repository Administrator at repository@glyndwr.ac.uk.

If you would like any help or ideas for what you could do to launch your repository or further raise its profile within your institution please contact the WRN team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

Open Access publication funds

2009-12-07T17:04:00.010Z

The most recent issue of the Learned Publishing journal (23(10), January 2010) includes an article titled ‘Paying for open access? Institutional funding streams and OA publication charges,’ authored by Stephen Pinfield, Chief Information Officer at the University of Nottingham. The article made available to everyone via open access, looks at ‘the issue of institutional OA funds and summarizes the current UK situation.’ The paper also includes a 12 step guide for institutions considering implementing an OA fund based on the experiences at Nottingham, who have had an OA fund in place for the last three years.

The paper references a report co-authored by Universities UK and the Research Information Network (RIN) ‘Paying for open access charges,’ which also provides guidance to HEIs on the payment of OA publication fees.

A recent presentation by Stephen Pinfield at the OASPA 2009 conference on this topic was circulated via the UKCoRR e-mail list and a video of the presentation is available to view.

If you would like more information on OA publication funds please contact the WRN Team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

Dipping a toe into Twitter

2009-12-03T10:35:00.007Z

Communication and building a sense of community are two concepts which lie at the heart of our activities within the Welsh Repository Network. Consequently, getting to grips with, and exploting, those Web 2.0 technologies which enable new forms of communication and community building form a central part of our project plan. In some areas (such as this blog) we are already up and running, but in others we are still very much at the explorer stage. I plan to offer a series of posts here on our blog about our experiences with some of these tools as we start to engage with them. First up, Twitter.

I have been registed in a personal capacity with Twitter for a wee while now but my own use of it has been patchy and my interest has phased in and out over time. I am a terrible lurker and enjoy reading occaisonal tweets from others, but I've never quite found the inspiration (or time!) to share my thoughts and activities with others - always assuming what I was up to was of little interest to the wider world. Then last month I had the opportunity of hearing Brian Kelly of UK Web Focus give a presentation about the use of Web 2.0 in Universities and I picked up all sorts of new ideas about how some of these tools could be used in the workplace. In particular Brian's message that we should all be monitoring our brand through Twitter struck a chord and I headed back to the office with renewed vigour to look at this again.

So, gradually I am coming round to the idea of using Twitter for work purposes. I've started to use TweetDeck on a daily basis. TweetDeck is software which offers users a better way of managing tweets, allowing you to monitor searches, create groups of tweets and store the tweet traffic in a more organised fashion than that offered by the single stream interface you get on the Twitter home page. Then last week we launched the first of our WRN learning object and within minutes of our message hitting the mailing lists we were creating a little buzz in Twitterland with several people tweeting about our new resource! I was able to monitor this 'buzz' in TweetDeck and now have evidence of how widely our message is reaching. This will be very useful when it comes to reporting back to JISC. What struck me was that it was people external to our project who were doing the tweeting about our resources; while this was very welcome shouldn't we have got in there first and included tweeting the resource as part of our communications plan for the launch? Hmm, yes I think so. So we now have a Twitter username - wrnstaff - and plan to include tweeting into our communication strategy for future project deliverables. It is going to take some time and effort to maintain the mindset required to share more information in this way, but as our project starts to deliver more tangible outputs I think it will become easier to include tweeting in our thinking. It will also take time for us to build up the connections and followers required to find our place in the community so please do consider following us if you use Twitter.

Finally, the whole topic of Twitter is generating some interesting discussions within the repository community. There is a useful round up on the UKCoRR blog, while for more detailed information about tweeting repository deposits see the Enlighten blog.

Research 3.0 - How are digital technologies revolutionising research?

2009-11-30T11:17:00.004Z

JISC has launching a year-long campaign called ‘Research 3.0 – driving the knowledge economy’, to debate how digital technologies are changing not only what research we do, but how it can be carried out. Key issues on the agenda for the next year will be how to share data, why collaborate and how to publish research work online.

A video has been made available on the campaign web site http://www.jisc.ac.uk/res3 and the THE (Times Higher Education) has published a ’Data Revolution’ supplement, highlighting how JISC is supporting universities and the Research Councils to advance in the ever-changing technology landscape.

JISC’s new Open Science report written by UKOLN at the University of Bath and the Digital Curation Centre, is stimulating discussion about the impact of open-ness (making methodologies, data and results available on the Internet, through transparent working practices), data driven science and citizen involvement on tomorrow’s research practice. Read the Open Science report at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx

Join the debate and add your views on the JISC Research 3.0 blog http://res3.jiscinvolve.org/

WRN Learning Object launched

2009-11-26T11:50:00.000Z

The WRN are pleased to announce the launch of their first learning object- ‘Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations with Intellectual Property Rights.’

One of the aims and objectives for the WRN Enhancement Project is to create a series of learning objects relating to a range of repository management topics, to enable WRN partners and the wider repository community to continue their engagement with the repository agenda. It is understood that not everyone involved with repositories can dedicate the time and resources necessary to attend all of the current training opportunities available to them. It is hoped that these learning objects will go some way to filling in the gaps, offering training that can be delivered remotely, at a time convenient to an individual. Topics for future learning objects to be considered are: the application of metadata to varying repository item types; and issues surrounding e-theses.

We are looking for feedback on this learning object to aid us with the design and content of future learning objects we are looking to create. An online survey has been created for the evaluation of the learning object above, the link to which can be found within the last page of the learning object.

euroCRIS Members Meeting

2009-11-23T17:19:00.001Z

University of St. Andrews- November 11-13

Earlier in the month I attended the euroCRIS Members Meeting hosted at the University of St. Andrews. euroCRIS is a not-for-profit association and aims to be the internationally recognized point of reference for all matters relating to Current Research Information Systems (CRIS). The organisation are also charged by the EC as the custodians of CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) an international standard for interoperation of CRIS, and an EU recommendation to the member states.

The first day of the meeting provided an introduction to the group for new members like me, through short presentations on the group’s current activities. There was also a tutorial on CERIF, describing the conceptual model of how the ideal CRIS would be structured and what information should be held to describe every research activity and the relationships between the key entities. The CERIF model is standardized but it is up to the institution applying the model within their system as to which semantics are used to describe each element. This is recognized as a barrier to CRIS interoperability and the euroCRIS Board have begun to look at a Publication Type standardization list. CERIF is a standard and there are a handful of CRIS that are CERIF compliant. CERIF has also been prepared in XML format so it can be applied to a system being designed in- house.

The second day of the meeting began with presentations from a number of specially invited speakers from Scottish HEIs. Valerie McCutcheon gave an interesting presentation on the University of Glasgow’s in- house CRIS. The CRIS is fed by the University’s HR, finance and student records systems as well as their institutional repository Enlighten. The system then in turn feeds the finance and student records systems, the institutional repository and University department’s research mapping databases and academic’s webpages. The system can keep tabs on everyone involved in University research regardless of whether they are internal or external to the University, or whether they are a member of staff or a student. The system is also set up to e-mail the lead researcher of a project to remind them of forthcoming project milestones such as reporting deadlines. Glasgow are currently funded by JISC for their Enrich project, looking to improve the integration of Enlighten with the CRIS.

The second presentation came from Lisa Rogers, Heriot Watt University who is working on the journalTOCs project. The project has aggregated the table of contents’ RSS feeds of over 12,000 journal titles to provide a search and current awareness service for journal publications. The project has also created a number of APIs which can be embedded within a website. One API can offer a search on journal titles, another on article metadata. A third API can limit a search down to those journals subscribed to by an institution. It’s also possible to create a MyTOCs list of selected journal titles. Lisa discussed two possible use cases for the application of a journalTOC API for a repository manager: the first, to help identify new content for a repository; the second, to enhance the metadata of existing recently added items in the repository. It is also possible to set up an alert when a pre-print within a repository is finally published in a journal. I asked Lisa afterwards about the possibility of applying the API in a repository as a way of auto-completing metadata when making a submission to a repository. It was thought that with some developer’s magic this could be possible. The use of the API in this method with some of the commercial CRIS was also discussed as highlighted by the journlTOCs team in their blog post about their attendance at the meeting: Presentation at EUROCRIS.

In the afternoon a presentation was given by Marjan Vernooy, SURFfoundation in which she outlined the results of an investigation comparing three CRIS- PURE (Atira), CONVERIS (Avedas) and Metis. The study compared the three systems on a number of points such as: input and registration; output and reporting; adaptability; and pricing. Although all three systems scored similarly, PURE was the system that scored the highest on most points.

Another presentation of note was given by Mark Cox, Kings College London about their R4R (Readiness4REF) JISC project. The presentation focused specifically on the project objectives directly related to CERIF which are based on the development of a CERIF4REF profile. This profile would act as a wrapper around current CRIS data to make it compatible for REF reporting. The project is also looking to work with both publishers and RCUK to explore the use of CERIF4REF in importing/ exporting data. The application of CERIF4REF with ePrints, Dspace and Fedora repository systems is also being considered.

With the forthcoming REF the implementation of CRIS within institutions has come to the fore. The euroCRIS group is a good point of reference for those interested in the benefits of a CRIS and their potential uses. euroCRIS can offer training in these areas and also hold biennial conferences on related topics. To take advantage of all of the group’s services it is necessary to take out an annual membership . Different membership types are available.

Citation Count APIs

2009-11-17T13:02:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago Stuart Lewis disseminated to the repository community some work he had been doing on a citation count API for use in repositories. The API created by Stuart creates a plug-in to a repository item record showing the citation count for that item in the SCOPUS bibliographic index. The API works by matching the DOI included in the repository item record with the DOI in the SCOPUS record for the same item. Discussion within the mailing lists however, highlighted that it would be fairly easy to extend the API to match with an item’s title/ author/ year etc. if DOIs are not consistently present within repository item records. A blog post about the API and how to implement it within a repository can be found within Stuart’s blog. Further examples of how the citation count API can be used are available from the SCOPUS website.

An example of the SCOPUS citation count API in action within a repository record can be seen from The HKU (University of Hong Kong) Scholars Hub . This item record example also has citation counts for the item within Web of Science. Through some Google searching I hunted down the following blog post by Jonathan Rochkind at John Hopkins University highlighting the application of the “Link Article Match Retrieval Service” (described at the bottom of the webpage). If your institution has a subscription to WoS, this API will provide you with the citation counts for an item matched by DOI/ author/ title for use within a repository record.

The use of citation counts within repository item records can be extremely useful within the forthcoming REF as a way of demonstrating the level of ‘Impact’ an item has had. It can also be a way of enabling institutions to select the publications they wish to put forward for the REF, highlighting a well received piece of research.

The APIs described above will give you the total citation counts for the item within those specific bibliographic databases. For some institutional reporting the citation counts per year are necessary but specific subscriptions to WoS and SCOPUS services are necessary to access these.

If you would like more information about the use and implementation of citation count APIs within your repository please contact the WRN Team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

Statistics follow up

2009-11-17T11:31:00.003Z

Following on from previous posts about statistics and how to use them there have been a few more ideas circulating the community which I thought we'd share with you:

Firstly, Jenny Delasalle from Warwick has posted some further thoughts on using Google Analytics on the WRAP Repository Blog . The idea of sending out monthly email communications to the authors of the top downloads from within the repository is an inspiring way of generating institutional awareness of your content.

Secondly, William Nixon of Enlighten has shared the methods he uses with Google Analytics to create a top 100 list of search terms and phrases which they then promote on their repository. Full details appeared on the UKCoRR mailing list.

Please contact us via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk if you'd like to learn more about using Google Analytics with your repository.

News round up

2009-11-17T10:40:00.004Z

A round up of a few news items for your attention ...

Welsh Repository Network - now on Wikipedia!
In order to increase our online presence and engage with Web 2.0 methods of communication we have now added a page all about the WRN to Wikipedia.

Study on links between repositories and OPACS
A new study has been published on the links between repositories and OPACS. The JISC-funded ‘Online catalogue and repository interoperability study’ carried out by the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde suggests that although there is overlap between the types of information resources recorded in library catalogues and repositories, these overlaps are rarely apparent to the information seeker. This is because both types of system need to be searched separately as there is no interlinking. The study offers practical advice for universities looking to make improvements in this area.

Article on Open Access in the Times Higher
Learning to share
12 November 2009
By Zoë Corbyn, Matthew Reisz

This major and potentially significant article on the Open Access debate appeared in the Times Higher last week. (Link may need a subscription to the THE)

Text Mining for Scholarly Communications and Repositories Joint Workshop

2009-11-03T14:53:00.015Z

The Text Mining workshop was held in Manchester on 28-29th October 2009 and focused on the challenges and priorities associated with integrating text mining technologies in applications to support scholarly communication and repository initiatives. With the vast amounts of information now available on the internet, the benefits provided by text mining for discovering relevant documents have become increasingly significant.

Professor Tony Hey presented the keynote and he spoke about the need for more intelligent data discovery in a multi-disciplinary and collaborative way for Science to move from data and information towards knowledge (DIKW). These complex technologies have been applied successfully to the Science domains, particularly chemistry and medicine and are being adopted by BioMedCentral and Elsevier. Rafael Sidi from Elsevier again spoke of information overload and the importance of building applications on top of content using open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This would allow interoperability and collaboration between publishers' collections and the potential for free access to content with subscriptions for the added services.

Emma Tonkin's overview of the FixRep Project at UKOLN that is examining text mining techniques for automated metadata extraction was particularly relevant to the repository world. Presentations are now available online at The National Centre for Text Mining.

ResearchScope

2009-10-29T10:07:00.002Z

Research Scope is federated harvesting and discovery service that provides an appealing and useful single point of access to open access research in Ireland.

It works by harvesting information from research repositories across the country; by re-presenting them via ResearchScope as well as the original home repositories, the information is made more visible to web search engines. ResearchScope is powered by a piece of open source software called Harvester, produced by the Public Knowledge Project, a Canadian group based in Simon Frasier University. A video presentation about ResearchScope is available via YouTube.

This is a useful and interesting model for the Welsh Repository Network to consider and we will look at this in more detail in our next business meeting.

Welcome to I-WIRE Project Staff

2009-10-22T14:37:00.006+01:00

Welcome to Scott Hill, Project Manager and Louise Harrington, Project Support Officer who have joined the team at Cardiff University's I-WIRE Project.

Scott and Louise joined the team last week, bringing the core project team to full capacity, and are now in the process of putting project controls in place and progressing the first of the Work Packages.

The I-WIRE (Integrated Workflow for Institutional Repository Enhancement) Project is funded by the JISC Information Environment 2009-2011 (INF11) programme. The project will develop a workflow and toolset, integrated into a portal environment, for the submission, indexing, and re-purposing of research outputs in Cardiff University’s Institutional Repository ORCA. This will be based on requirements gathered from academic Schools and administrative Directorates in the University.

The I-WIRE project BLOG is at: http://blogs.cf.ac.uk/iwire/.

If you would like any more information about the project please get in touch with either Scott (HillSC@Cardiff.ac.uk) or Louise (HarringtonLE1@Cardiff.ac.uk).

CADAIR Repository Advisor new UKCoRR Secretary

2009-10-21T16:41:00.004+01:00

Congratulations to Dr. Nicky Cashman, CADAIR Repository Advisor, Aberystwyth University, who is the newly appointed Secrteary of UKCoRR, ‘the professional organisation for UK open access repository administrators and managers.’

Speaking about her nomination, Nicky said “I have the enthusiasm to positively promote UKCoRR that stems from a desire to become an integral part of an ever-increasing repository community. I am in contact with several publishers, have a good working relationship with both university management and academic staff and thus have a comprehensive understanding of how present repository issues affect individuals such as ourselves”.

Any individual whose work is directly involved with a repository can become a member of UKCoRR and it is a really good forum to obtain advice and good practice from other repository staff. If you would like to become a member of UKCoRR, please visit http://www.ukcorr.org/membership/index.php and follow the instructions on the page.

Open Access Week Underway

2009-10-20T10:25:00.004+01:00

Open Access Week is now underway and here in the WRN offices we've been gathering together some of the news stories we've seen...

Open Access for UK research: JISC’s contributions - Summary of achievements
This new booklet on Open Access ,published to co-incide with OA week, promotes the work JISC have been doing in this field and includes a nice name check for the Welsh Repository Network - see the purple box on the left of page 4 in the pdf version.

New Open Access website encourages exchange of research data
SURF, the higher education and research partnership for network services and ICT in the Netherlands, has launched a website to provide structured information about Open Access to research results and the advantages that Open Access has. Practical examples are used to illustrate the possibilities opened up by the Internet for innovations in scholarly communication.

University of Glasgow - Enlighten News Stories
The University of Glasgow are celebrating OA week by publicly recognising different people within the University who have been working hard to make their repository Enlighten successful. They will be featuring a different person (or people!) each day of the week with a news story on their site.

Institutional Repository Bibliography
To celebrate Open Access Week Digital Scholarship is releasing version one of the Institutional Repository Bibliography. This bibliography presents over 620 selected English-language articles, books, and other scholarly textual sources that are useful in understanding institutional repositories.

RSP Deposit Competition
The RSP is running a competition to find the institution with the greatest number of fulltext, open access items deposited in its repository during open access week. The top institution wins a fabulous RSP iPod!

It would be nice to gather together any stories from around Wales to do our own bit of OA promotion, so please do get in touch with the team via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk if you have done anything to promote OA week.

More on impact and value

2009-10-19T09:38:00.002+01:00

This is just a quick update to pass on a useful article about repositories and impact. Colin Smith of Open Research Online has recently posted an article on his blog outlining the benefits of an IR when it comes to impact and demonstrating value for the REF. Definately well worth a quick read!

JISC Deposit Show & Tell

2009-10-16T16:46:00.004+01:00

I attended the JISC Deposit Show & Tell event held at Birkbeck, London on Monday 12th October. The aim of the event was to identify deposit tools or combinations of tools that would clearly benefit repository users and to plot a path for those tools toward widespread and sustainable take-up. JISC's funding roadmap includes provision for sustained improvements to the 'deposit' process and it is hoped that the outcomes from the event will inform JISC's planning.

The first half of the day provided a stage for developers to 'show & tell' the deposit tools they have been working on so that a list of features/functions that have been used in a real end user deposit processes could be created. The second half of the day was spent mock prototyping projects that could further build and distribute the next generation of deposit tools to specific end users.

Stuart Lewis from Auckland University presented an interesting GenericDeposit via email (and SWORD). The aim is to provide academics and researchers with a familiar interface - an email is sent to the 'repository' with the title in the subject heading, an abstract in the body and files for deposit are attached. The author is assumed to be the sender and an email reply is then received on the status of the deposit. Very neat and very simple!

EMLoader, demonstrated by Fred Howel enables easier deposit of research papers through bulk upload of bibliographic metadata. The functionality again uses SWORD and connects two existing services: the Depot, a UK repository for researchers who do not have other provision, and PublicationsList.org, a web site for researchers to build a web page listing their publications.

The day was well attended and brought developers together from a range of projects in a productive session - JISC will issue a call for funding based on some of these ideas.

Edinburgh Repository Fringe 2009

2009-10-15T10:02:00.005+01:00

"Beyond the Repository Fringe" was held on 30th and 31st of July in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. This followed on from last years successful gathering and was aimed at an audience of repository developers, managers, researchers and administrators to see how the Repository landscape is developing and what new techniques and ideas are on the horizon.

The event kicked off with a welcome from Sheila Cannell, Head of Edinburgh University Library Services. Sheila highlighted the current financial crisis and suggested that this may act as the catalyst to trigger real changes in methods of scholarly communication - will this alter the balance between journal publications and open access?

The opening Keynote was given by Ben O'Steen and Sally Rumsey from Oxford University. We had an interesting view of the history of the Bodleian Library - "an arc to save knowledge" - and the parallels with today's institutional repositories. Ben emphasised Clifford Lynch's idea of repositories as a set of services and like the internet they should be distributed across a number of nodes. So the idea of a single stand alone repository is on its way out. He also explained the importance of linked data and connections between 'things' on the web - RDF provides a framework for this. Sally summed up by saying that repositories are moving forward but it will be a slow incremental change and we are waiting for simplification of processes especially deposit and collaboration between IRs and publishers. My view is that technically, SWORD has gone a long way to simplifying deposit but there is a demand for auto-completion of metadata.

The rest of the morning session was taken up with a series of entertaining Pecha Kucha presentations which consist of 20 slides displayed for exactly 20 seconds each. James Toon from University of Edinburgh gave an interesting overview of the ERIS project which builds on the successful IRIScotland pilot. The aim is "to develop a set of user-led and user-centric solutions that will motivate researchers to deposit their work in repositories, facilitate the integration of repositories in research and institutional processes". There are strong parallels here with the WRN and RSP and we are already planning to link up and discuss possible ways collaborating.

Les Carr spoke about "Repository Challenges" and covered the themes of service integration, e-learning and the need for repositories to be efficient and effective and to "Pimp our research ride"! He also suggested that repositories are like a box of Lego so that you can put data together as lots of modular components. Richard Jones gave us an overview of Repository Tools that his company Symplectic have developed and Julian Cheal from UKOLN then gave an award winning insight in to his Adobe Air deposit tool. Rumour has it that the bottle of whiskey he won for his entertaining and informative presentation was finished off that evening during a lively debate!

Hannah and I presented an overview of the WRN project, how we aim to work with other groups and projects, offer support for partners and the e-Theses project. Joyce Lewis from Southampton told an interesting story about how repositories can be used in Marketing by creating a narrative that links to items. We also heard from William Nixon & Gordon Allan about the interesting work being done in Glasgow University by the Enrich project which aims to bring disconnected research elements together. They highlighted the fact that the research lifecycle includes a short burst of publishing but there is a lot of unpublished work and that repositories and research systems can no longer operate in isolation.

There were two parallel afternoon sessions: "Show and Tell" and a DataShare meeting. The "Show and Tell" kicked off with Morag Watson from Edinburgh University telling us about her experiences with Open Journal Systems (OJS) which is being used by libraries for publishing and managing journals at low cost. It is open source, has a flexible design, can be installed locally and is easy to use and administer. Hugh Glaser from Southampton University then took up the earlier theme of the Semantic Web by showing us how open data can be linked when identified by names. He concludes by asking can you reliably match your publications to a consistent author id?

Fred Howell gave a very interesting overview of the EM Loader project which connects publicationslist.org to the Depot, a nationwide repository being run by EDINA. Publicationslist.org allows you to maintain personal publications lists and the metadata can be used to deposit items via SWORD. They also included a PubMed search to allow authors to find papers. Daniel Hook of Symplectic then described their system for automatic aggregation of data from key data sources to automatically generate lists of publications. Again the motivation here was to encourage authors to manage and deposit their research output by lowering the barriers and providing incentives in the form citation and usage statistics.

The second morning consisted of Digital Curation Centre network meeting and a series of Tutorials and Round Table discussions. The first of the Round Table discussions "Practical impact and experiences of institutional OA mandates for IRs" was hosted by Helen Muir of queen Margaret University. Not surprisingly researchers and academics tend to resent the pressure applied by the 'stick' approach of mandates and often it is better to emphasise the benefits of OA through the use of publications lists and Google Analytics etc. Of all those present for the discussion, without exception they used a mediated deposit process either through library staff or research administrators. Participants also expressed difficulty in getting 'final' versions but noted that targeting 'star' researchers tends to have a knock on effect.

Ian Stuart from EDINA chaired the Round Table discussion on "Where will repositories be in 5 years time?" This produced a lively session which saw IRs providing the core management of data but becoming part of a wider research management processes and questioned whether current peer review practices would change.

The Closing Plenary was delivered by Clifford Lynch from the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) who spoke about repository services, the life-cycle of what goes in to repositories, and building and selling repositories. More on the Closing Plenary can be found here.

SPARC Deposit Mandate Resources

2009-10-13T10:37:00.005+01:00

Using the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences as a case study, SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has developed a set of resources looking at how to develop and instate a successful open-access policy (or deposit mandate) within an institution in regards to its repository or website. Links to these resources are available from the SPARC Advocacy page Campus Open Access Policies. Resources are available for both those institutions who have already initiated such a policy, as well as for those who are considering the implementation of an open-access policy in the future.

If you would like any further information about open-access policies/ deposit mandates and how they can be inplemented within your institution, please contact the WRN Team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

Statistics

2009-10-13T09:01:00.006+01:00

Do you want to demonstrate the importance of your repository?
Do you want to demonstrate the global impact of the content you are collecting?
Do you want to know who is visiting your repository, where they come from and how they find you?

Statistics can help!

Collecting and analysing usage statistics can greatly help institutions demonstrate the world-wide impact of their repository and can help justify the input of effort required to gather that ever elusive content! Nicky Cashman, Repository Advisor at Aberystwyth University, has recently used the reporting tools in Google Analytics to create a usage report for AU's institutional repository Cadair.

Screen shot of Cadair statistical report

The report contains a selection of the 'big picture' repository statistics alongside name checks for the top downloads and contributors, and a selection of postive feedback and comments from repository users. The format is brief but it gets across the key messages in an eye catching way, especially with the use of colourful graphs and charts. Nicky will be producing these reports on a regular basis and is planning to use them in various forums where the repository is under discussion, including meetings with senior managers and decision makers. A copy of Nicky's full statistical report is available in the WRN document store on our web site. If any partners want more information about using and exploiting statistics, or want assistance getting Google Analytics up and running on their repository, please just email WRN the team.

Finally, it seems appropriate to add to this post the results of the recent WRN statistical census that we undertook. Between July and October 2009 we have seen just over a 12% growth in the number of items contained within the Welsh repositories. A table showing individual growth rates across this first reporting period appears below.

Fingers crossed we can build on these figures over the coming months.

New WRN website launched

2009-10-09T10:26:00.001+01:00

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Welsh Repository Network (WRN) website, available here http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk.

The new WRN website brings you information about the project, news on its current activities, and links to the documents and presentations produced by the project team/ project partners.

Other features of the new site include:

Project partner repository search: Allowing you to search for content across partner repositories by entering the search term in just one place.
Chat with the WRN team: Utilising the Google Chat client to offer instant support to project partner queries.
Partners Links/ WRN button: Clickable map giving the location and providing access to each of the repositories that make up the Welsh Repository Network.

**Coming soon**
Learning Objects: Online learning objects on various repository related topics to work through remotely from your desktop.

We would like to have your feedback on the website so have a look, give things a try and Get in Touch.

Research Management News

2009-10-07T08:56:00.000+01:00

The second consultation document for the Research Excellence Framework has now been published. This document sets out the new arrangements for the assessment and funding of research in UK higher education institutions that will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), including information about the proposals to assess the impact of research. Responses to the consultation should be made by midday on 16th December 2009.

Secondly, a euroCRIS membership meeting will take place in St. Andrews on the 11-13 November 2009. euroCRIS is the professional association of CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) experts and custodian of the CERIF standard, and is dedicated to improvement of research information availability.

The membership meeting programme will comprise: a euroCRIS overview session, including business meeting; a CERIF tutorial; progress of the new website; Scottish session and Jostein Hauge session. A one-day workshop on the last day will deal with CERIF-CRIS implementations, their benefits and problems.

Are any partners already members of euroCRIS? Or is anyone interested in joining? The membership fees are reasonable and given that a few of our partners are considering implementing CRIS systems we feel this is an area worth finding out more about. Please contact us via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk if you are interested in going to this meeting or already planning to attend.

Open Journal Systems (OJS)

2009-10-06T12:46:00.000+01:00

During the last WRN video meeting, partners expressed an interest in Open Journal Systems (OJS) which is being used by libraries for publishing and managing journals at low cost. It is open source, has a flexible design, can be installed locally and is easy to use and administer. Morag Watson from Edinburgh University gave a very positive review of this system at the recent Edinburgh Repository Fringe 2009. There will be a further blog post covering this event in the next few days.

Successful Site Visit

2009-09-29T10:01:00.000+01:00

Institution: Swansea Metropolitan University
Date: 18th September 2009
Subject: Site Visit

On Friday 18th September the WRN team conducted a successful site visit at Swansea Metropolitan University. At the invitation of Anne Harvey, Head of Library and Learning Services, Antony and I met with members of the institution’s Repository Working Group along with other Senior Academics, and delivered a presentation introducing the work of the WRN and the benefits of submitting to and using a repository. This presentation facilitated discussion with those present as to some of the organisational, cultural and professional issues associated with managing, populating and embedding repositories within the processes of the institution. Feedback from those academics present was positive and the position and development of the repository will be taken forward and discussed within future committees.

Anne Harvey, Head of Library and Learning Services, Swansea Metropolitan University
Hannah Payne, Repository Support Officer, WRN

Following a tasty buffet lunch, Antony and I then demonstrated the workflow submission process within DSpace, highlighting the methods for administering workflow steps and managing workflow permissions. Antony then met with members of the University’s technical team to talk through some of the particulars of Swansea Met’s repository installation; whilst I explored collection policy ideas in relation to the Welsh E-theses Harvesting Service and Mediated Deposit Bureau workpackages with Anne and Dr. David Ashelby, Dean of Academic Affairs. Help was also given with the completion of the e-thesis questionnaire.

If anyone wants any further information about these site visit elements, or would be interested in the delivery of any similar training within their own institution, please don’t hesitate to contact the WRN Team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

News Round-up

2009-09-24T09:32:00.000+01:00

Two interesting pieces of news from repository land this week ...

Enabling Open Scholarship

EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS) is a new organisation for universities and research institutions worldwide. It is acting as both an information service and a forum for raising and discussing issues around the mission of modern universities and research institutions, particularly with regard to the creation, dissemination and preservation of research findings. Of particular note is the fact that EOS is primarily aimed at senior institutional managers who have an interest in, and wish to help develop thinking on, strategies for promoting open scholarship to the academy as a whole and to society at large.

Repositories are mentioned widely on the site and we would encourage all our parnters to explore this new resource and promote it within their own institution.

Open Access Week & RSP Deposit Competition

To coincide with Open Access Week (19th-23rd October 2009) the Repositories Support Project (RSP) is launching a competition! The UK institution with the greatest number of fulltext, open access items deposited in its repository during open access week wins an RSP iPod!

With our next WRN statistical census date fast approaching (1st Oct), our attention will be drawn to the progress (or otherwise!) with getting full text content into our own Welsh repositories. Perhaps we should all enter into the competitve spirit and use Open Access Week as an opportunity to encourage academics to deposit more content?

JISC Cross Project Forum: 8th September, 2009

2009-09-14T09:48:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday 8th September, Antony and I represented the WRN at a JISC organised Cross Project Forum. Also in attendance were representatives of the RSP, UKCoRR, ERIS (Enhancing Repository Infrastructure in Scotland) and UKOLN. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together similarly focussed repository projects and groups to consider and discuss repository development and support across the UK. It was hoped that the forum could be held at regular intervals over the next 18 months and that over this time those within the forum could collaborate with each other in order to meet the individual aims and objectives of each group.

Points of interest from the meeting in regards to the WRN and its partners included:

Dominic Tate, RSP Project Co-ordinator, relayed to the group that the focus of the new phase RSP was looking to continue its support of Repository Managers within England and Wales; with the continued focus of encouraging more content within HE repositories. The RSP hoped to deliver ‘campaigns’ on certain repository topics, entailing high level events; training; and support materials.

ERIS, represented by Project Manager, James Toon, is looking to work with both Repository Managers and Researchers within Scottish HEIs to create tools and solutions to encourage engagement and content within Scottish IRs. A special focus is on the work of cross-institutional research pools and the curation of any data produced. ERIS will build upon the work of the previous IRIScotland project. This project established two pilot services: a cross repository harvesting service to aggregate research outputs; and a hosting service based at the National Library of Scotland for those without repositories. These services are of particular interest to the WRN in light of our proposed e-theses harvesting work package. The previous project also produced a draft metadata policy between partners which may be useful to inform our Mediated Deposit Bureau.

The possibility of special interest/ software user groups within the bigger UKCoRR structure was suggested by Mary Robinson, UKCoRR Secretary. The IRIScotland and WRN groups already create forums for the included Repository Managers/ Staff and possible ways for those groups as a whole to be represented within UKCoRR were considered such as the creation of group ‘reps.’

Other interesting points discussed included:

The creation of academic profiles to identify the types of ‘academic’ that are out there and their views on OA publishing along with their potential relationship with a repository. Suggestions for advocacy and engagement strategies for each type will also be produced.

The creation of a ‘How to’ advocacy pack including model answers to academics’ repository FAQs.

The use of Twitter to raise awareness of individual repositories. A suggestion was to have repository staff appear as personal members but to use it as a professional site; making tweets about repository achievements and developments. Rather than having a repository account automatically tweeting when particular items were deposited. A repository RSS/Atom news feed maybe better suited for this purpose.

Development of a technical awareness list for JISC projects so results of past projects within one technical area are grouped together and easily searchable so developed software is not lost.

Forthcoming publication of a JISC study on Repository and OPAC links. James highlighted that work has been carried out at the National Library of Scotland connecting their repository with a Voyager OPAC, an area of interest for many of the Welsh HEIs.

See the UKCoRR blog for another post about this meeting and other posts regarding repository issues and UKCoRR.

JISC Inform article

2009-08-20T11:39:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to pass on the news that the Welsh Repository Network has received a nice write up in the latest issue of JISC Inform ...

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/inform25.aspx#walesrepository

A nice overview of our success to date - let's keep the momentum going!

Support Query: Author Name Versioning

2009-07-06T14:14:00.001+01:00

Institution: University of Glamorgan
Date: 30th June 2009
Subject: Metadata

A recent query came in from the University of Glamorgan who were looking as to how ‘to build some robustness around the issue of duplicate authors appearing in DSpace when the same author has a variety of author names.’ The phenomenon of different author names for the same author comes about from different publishers enforcing different citation styles and restrictions on an author. If each of these different names is entered into the ‘Author’ field of an item’s metadata record then there will be as many ‘Browse by Author’ records available in the repository as there are varieties of the author’s name.

A response to the query came from Bangor University who are planning in the future to agree a name format with each author and to use this agreed name in the ‘Author’ field. The publisher’s version of the name could then appear in the citation for the item entered into the ‘Citation’ field. By entering the data in this way only one ‘Browse by Author’ record is ever created but the name variant still appears in the item record and is therefore, a searchable object for search and discovery services such as Google.

This method offers a very straightforward solution to the problem but relies on the individual to recognise which author the variant name is associated with. I put the query forward to the JISC-REPOSITORIES mailing list to see if there were any other methods being utilised within other repositories and if any of these were a more automated solution to the problem.

I was previously aware of the Names project, which is developing a name authority system to reliably and uniquely identify individuals and institutions. This project has received further JISC funding and they are developing their prototype API which uses the Zetoc service to identify authors by assigning a unique id to each individual, and then associating each variant of the author’s name to this id. Current documentation on this API is available from http://130.88.120.172:8080/help.html, along with some example searches from the prototype. Networking Names, was highlighted as another initiative which looked to identify components of a “Cooperative Identities Hub” which would store information to help identify unique entities such as individual authors.

Another development which was of interest was CoNE (Control of Named Entities), a module which, according to the developer, can sit over DSpace, EPrints or Fedora repository software. It allows you to create an authority record for a number of metadata fields, including Author Name, so you can add all the known variants of that field into the module but you are prompted to use the confirmed authority record (or name version) for that entry. This module also applies to Journal Titles which may be of use if some contributors use title abbreviations.

A number of the respondents to the query were EPrints users, this software already offering auto-completion for a variety of fields including Author Name, using information from a known database or web service, i.e. LDAP. The ‘Creator’ (Author) field is a combination of a ‘name’ and an ‘id’ i.e. an e-mail address, which gives further authentication for each author. A citation in EPrints is not entered as a separate field however, but is concatenated from a selection of the other item record metadata fields. Therefore, whatever name is entered as an author will then be used within the citation.

This functionality means that it is not possible for two variants of an author name to appear within the same record, and if you wanted to stay true to the publisher’s version each time you would be back to having different ‘Browse by Author’ records again; although, in the repository database each name variant would be associated with the same author id. It was pointed out however, that this functionality does allow a controlled house citation style to be used within each repository record citation. As one respondent said, ‘The form of a citation always depends on the publication in which it appears, not on the publication to which it refers.’ Perhaps then the publisher’s version of an author name does not need to be stuck to rigidly, or even reflected within an item record, and an agreed in-house style for citation can be used each time.

If anyone would like further clarification of this information, or would like help with any other item record queries then please do not hesitate to contact the WRN team via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

The REF: Results of Pilots and Future Developments

2009-06-25T16:26:00.000+01:00

I recently attended a one day programme organised by Kings College London on The REF: Results of Pilots and Future Developments. Supported by HEFCE, the day gave those involved, and not involved, with the pilot alike the opportunity to learn more about the planned direction of the REF. The day consisted of a number of presentations to all delegates in the morning including two speakers from HEFCE, with parallel sessions on various related topics running in the afternoon.

A large emphasis within the REF Pilot had been on citation analysis, with debate circulating as to the use of such analyses to replace the peer review process used previously within the RAE. What papers would be considered within the REF was also the subject of debate with the pilot considering three possible methods of identifying academic’s papers for citation analysis (as explained to the WRN at this month’s Gregynog Colloquium Repository Stream by Lyndsey Savage, Bangor University): all academic papers identified by author’s name; all academic papers by author’s institutions; selection of academic papers for authors.

From attending the London event, it seems that the REF will bear a resemblance to the previous RAE, with a selection of an author’s best papers being put forward for peer- review assessment, and the citation analysis for each paper being provided to inform the panel. What still remains unclear is which sources will be used to inform the citation analysis. Web of Science and SCOPUS were both used within the pilot but concern was expressed by a number of delegates within one of the parallel sessions I attended that their institution either subscribed to one service or the other, and not both. The use of Open Access sources such as repositories was not going to be used to gather citation analyses as far as I could tell from discussions.

The assessment of ‘impact’ of research will also form part of the REF, a factor that none of the discussions I'd heard previously had even considered. How institutions will construct, record and store such information along with the author data, the research ouput data and the citation data is a new challenge to be met.

The use of repositories for the management of such information to construct an REF return was touched upon. Two JISC projects presented in one of the afternoon sessions were R4R (Readiness for REF) and a project at the University of Reading, with both looking specifically at how a repository can be developed for this purpose.

The second afternoon session I attended ‘ICT implications for the REF,’ discussed research conducted on behalf of JISC that surveyed REF pilot institutions as to their use of ICT in preparing information for the pilot. The study found that the use of ICT was varied between each institution, and that institutions would have to develop much better processes for capturing research outputs, the crux point for all being trying to successfully link research output data to staff data.

A number of systems were being used within the institutions of the attendant delegates, with both research management systems and repositories in place. A second JISC study, ‘Repositories and Research Management Systems,’ found minimal integration between the two systems or their processes when in place within an institution. Some of the newly funded JISC projects, including Cardiff University’s I-WIRE project, which are looking as to how such systems can be integrated were presented on the day.

There were around 300 delegates in attendance on the day and it was interesting to see the variety of job titles; with a large majority either affiliated with the research office, the library or the repository. This highlighted to me the number of stakeholders involved in an institution with an RAE/ REF return and brought home further the need for not only integration between disparate systems but collaboration between disparate departments.

Gregynog 2009 - Presentations now available

2009-06-22T13:00:00.000+01:00

The presentations from the repositories strand held at the recent Gregynog Colloquium 2009 are now available online:

'Copyright & Repositories' Jackie Knowles, WRN Presentation slides
'Multimedia Deposits: Complications and Considerations' HannahPayne, WRN Presentation slides
'EThOS and the Aberystwyth Experience’ Dr. Nicky Cashman, Aberystwyth University Presentation slides
‘Repository@Bangor and the REF pilot’ Lyndsey Savage, Bangor University Presentation slides
‘Integrating ORCA: Cardiff University's journey to an institutional repository with a service oriented approach’ Tracey Andrews, Cardiff University Presentation slides
‘Repository Management: the University of Liverpool experience’ Shirley Yearwood- Jackman, University of Liverpool Presentation slides
‘The Welsh Repository Network: Where do we go from here?’ Jackie Knowles, WRN Presentation slides
'Repositories and JISC' Andy MacGregor, JISC Presentation slides

The WRN team would like to extend their thanks to both the presenters and the participants attending the strand whose enthusiasm and hard work contributed to the success of the event. The extended two day programme we offered this year proved to be well justified with excellent attendance across the board. If anyone has any queries about any of the sessions, or if you would like follow up on any particular topic, then please do not hesitate to contact the team using the usual address.

Support call: metadata advice

2009-05-26T18:52:00.000+01:00

Institution: Bangor University
Date: 28th April 2009
Subject: Metadata

Bangor University are using their master publications database to feed information about research outputs into their repository. They recently called the WRN team to seek advice about transferring various fields of metadata from their database into the repository, and specifically which of the Dublin Core (DC) fields were most appropriate for various bits of publication information. These are the fields in question:

Conference name
We advised to map this to the publisher field in DC. Even if the conference is not strictly 'published' this is probably still the best place for the conference name information to be stored as the DC qualifier nameConference can be used in this field.

Commissioning bodies
We advised to map this information to a DC description field. It could be mapped to a contributor field but the catch all of description is probably the better option.

Patent number
We advised to map this item to a DC identifier field. At present there is no qualifier within the identifier field for patent numbers but one could be used in the metadata scheme as a local modification so on the full item record the field would be tagged as identifier:patent number.

Media of output
During discussion we discovered that the media of output field is used at Bangor to house a mixture of information, sometimes containing information about the type of deposit such a conference poster and sometimes about the format it comes in such as on CDROM etc. As such we advised to again map this item to a DC description field as it is a catch all place for information to go, much like an additional information field. The varying contents of this field raised an interesting question about item types in the repository. The type information about publications in the Bangor publications database is stored as a letter code in a specific field and this should transfer over to the repository and into the DC type field quite happily. However, when we were asked about agreed terminology for the types within the repository we uncovered an interesting conundrum. There is a recommendation within DC standard to use a vocabulary within the type field, but this is quite restrictive and does not align with what are typically considered to be publication types in the repository. The vocabulary categorises most repository item types as 'text' which is not sufficiently detailed to indicate whether the item is a journal article, a book chapter, a report etc. We consequently advised Bangor that two DC type fields can be used within the metadata schema, one to store the required DC vocabulary terminology, and a second one to contain the more descriptive item types we would expect to see. At Aberystwyth University we have made this addition to our metadata scheme and added a local qualifier to the second type field - type:publicationtype - and defined our own set of values for this field to reflect the various types of information we store.

If anyone would like further clarification of this information, or would like help with their own metadata choices then please do not hesitate to contact the WRN team via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

Technical Priorities Survey

2009-05-19T10:49:00.000+01:00

Work package 4 of the new project is looking to build and implement a variety of technical tools and services to develop and enhance repository infrastructure and usage. A large number of possible tools were suggested within the original project bid:

Workflow

Automated metadata completion e.g. gathering journal metadata from external databases

Automatic cover sheet generation for repository deposits

Embargo management

Enhanced metadata collection (author affiliation etc. etc.?)

Import/Export of metadata

Generation of online CVs bibliography web pages from repository content

Export/import of publication information from repository to chosen citation software

Export/import of publication information into other university systems e.g. library catalogue

Export/import of publication information into other repositories

Repository management

Improvement of repository statistics and reporting

Integration of repository in REF requirements for reporting and statistical analysis

Integrating preservation services into the repository

Handling storage capacity for large items such as data and multimedia

User experience

Shopping basket facility allowing users to collect items together and download as a single package

Embedded players and streaming for display of multimedia deposits

We are currently surveying the WRN community as to which of these developments they see as priority for the project team to work on. Project partners should submit their choices by email by Friday 22nd May 2009.

Gregynog Repositories Strand 2009

2009-05-12T13:20:00.000+01:00

Booking for this year’s Gregynog Colloquium is now open and the WRN project is able to fund the attendance of two delegates from each WRN HEI to the organised Repository Stream. The stream will take place from Tuesday lunchtime through to Wednesday afternoon and will comprise of practical workshops, presentations and a face- to- face WRN business meeting to be held on the Wednesday afternoon.

Tuesday 9th June

2.00 - 3.15
Copyright Workshop: Jackie Knowles and Hannah Payne, WRN (AU)

3.15 – 3.45
Tea

3.45 - 5.00
Multimedia Deposits Presentation & Workshop: HannahPayne, WRN (AU)

Wednesday 10th June

9.30 - 10.00
'EThOS and the Aberystwyth Experience’ Dr. Nicky Cashman, Aberystwyth University

10.00 -10.30
‘Repository@Bangor and the REF pilot’ Lyndsey Savage, Bangor University

10.30 -11.00
‘Integrating ORCA’ Tracey Andrews/ Anne Bell, Cardiff University

11.00 - 11.30
Tea

11.30 - 12.00
‘The Welsh Repository Network: Where do we go from here?’ Jackie Knowles, WRN (AU)

12.00 -1.00
‘Repository Management: the University of Liverpool experience’ Shirley Yearwood- Jackman, University of Liverpool

1.00 – 2.00
Lunch

2.00 – 3.30
WRN Business Meeting

Full Colloquium programme details and the booking forms are available from http://www.gregynog.ac.uk/HEWIT/index.asp?Page=2.

To take advantage of a funded place please register and provide contact details for invoicing as instructed in previous emails from your project team, alternatively contact us via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk for further details.

Introducing the Welsh Repository Network (WRN) Enhancement Project!

2009-04-29T12:36:00.000+01:00

The Welsh Repository Network (WRN) Enhancement Project is looking to sustain and build upon the technical infrastructure and support network established between all twelve Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) within Wales during the WRN Start-Up project (http://whelf.ac.uk/wrn/index.shtml).

The Director of this new WRN project is Bill Hines, Assistant Director (Library Services) at Aberystwyth University. Jackie Knowles will take the role of Project Manager, and will be supported by Hannah Payne as Repository Support Officer (Organisational) and a yet to be recruited Technical Support Officer.

Within the WRN Start-Up Project support was delivered face- to- face through quarterly site visits and via e-mail and telephone support. Within the Enhancement Project we are looking to continue to provide support through these methods as well as by providing support through Web 2.0 technologies such as live chat via an interactive support website. The project team will also create and deliver via this website a range of interactive learning tools including mini tutorials, news feeds, and online demonstrations allowing WRN partners to utilise these materials in their own time.

Within this project we will also be exploring the idea of a centralised mediated deposit service for the WRN. It is hoped that provision of such a service by project staff will determine whether outsourcing item record creation enhances the rate of material being deposited within a repository; and whether the concept of remote mediation results in a successful workflow which embeds into the culture and policy framework of institutions.

The project team will look to work with WRN partners and other JISC repository projects to build and implement a variety of tools and services to develop and enhance repository infrastructure and usage. The following key areas for development have been identified: Workflow; Import/Export of metadata; Repository management; User experience. Based on feedback from WRN partners we will develop those tools and services which have been identified as the priority enhancements to their repositories.

The last element of this project will look to develop a thesis harvesting service within the National Library of Wales (NLW) providing a central hub and searchable interface for theses produced within the HEIs of the WRN. Working in liaison with the British Library’s EThOS project, the NLW will be the national point for providing Welsh e-theses content for the EThOS repository.

Welcome message

2009-04-29T11:58:00.001+01:00

Welcome to the Welsh Repository Network Enhancement Project blog. The project team will be adding content to these pages very soon.