L&LR staff blog

I spent Friday at Leicester University at the meeting of UKCORR (UK Council of Research Repositories).  Presentations about Journal ToCs, SHERPA ROMEO, CADAIR among others were all very interesting but it was even more useful to discuss issues with other people in same position as us.  REF, implications of mandate and, especially, eTheses seem to be common concerns to everyone.  Most repositories seem to be heavily dependent on library skills, and the more deposits are mandated, the heavier the burden of review becomes.  A copyright workshop at the end of the day was an excellent forum in which to compare policies and workflows. 

The fabulously hard-working Gareth Johnson twittered and blogged the proceedings as well as forgoing his lunch to give us a guided tour of the David Wilson Library.  It’s wonderful to see what 32 million pounds looks like.  I particularly liked the ‘help zone’, and the information screens which give computer availability throughout the building as well as streaming local news and weather alongside library news!

Thanks to Leicester and Northampton for their joint hospitality, and to the officers of  UKCORR which has no budget so runs on goodwill; luckily there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of this.

As always, if you are curious about the repository, please ask me!

Bev!

On 17th September, Jill Partridge (Library & LR) and David Young (University Research Office) attended the faculty of Media, Humanities and Technology annual research conference where they delivered a short presentation on open access, the repository and benefits to staff. Here’s David’s write-up of that presentation, to be published in the faculty’s newsletter, Ada’s Notes.

I spent a day at Kingston University on Friday with UKCORR (United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories).  There were some very interesting presentations, and it was useful to share experience in the breaks.  Great to know we’re not alone.  These are a few of the themes which came out of the whole day.

Repositories seem to have a much better chance of success if they serve a purpose and are integrated into other University systems; for example Glasgow’s ‘Enlighten’ project really began to take off when the repository was adopted as the principle publications database.  This commitment has to permeate the research establishment, it can’t just be imposed.

The financial and publishing landscape of open-access is not getting easier.  Publishers see open-access publishing as a way to shift the onus for payment from users to authors or institutions.  RoMEO (copyright information service) is seeing no evidence of greater clarity of information from publishers.

The difficulties we have found with authors self-archiving are very common.  Every institution seems to check and edit, at the very least.  Most either train departmental administrators to deposit or have repository or library staff doing the deposits.  These processes are nearly always located within the library, wherever the repository is managed.

Thanks to Kingston for hosting a great meeting and everyone who shared ideas, but especially Morag Greig from Glasgow University and Bill Hubbard from the CRC for their particular help.

If you’re interested in learning any more about the repository please contact Jill and I in the library.

Bev!

I’m pleased to be able to announce the existence of a new, temporary virtual team within L&LR, made up of people lucky enough to be working with me on various e-resource-related projects over the coming months.

First, Jayne, whom many of you will already know from her work in reader services, is back to support digitisation work, for c.15 hours a week.

Elif and Phil from the Brayford reader services team will be dedicating several hours a week each to “e” projects including the constant battle to improve the quality of data on the Electronic Journals A-to-Z, the drive toward online reading lists, and work addressing the changing role of the Core Collection.

And finally, cataloguers Bev and Jill are working with me, one day a week apiece, as ‘Cataloguer – Institutional Repository‘. As the job title suggests, they will be working to improve item records on the University’s Institutional Repository, checking publishers’ licence terms, and generally optimising the University’s intellectual outputs for discovery by Google, etc.

*Better late than never.

In December I went, along with Julian Beckton (C.E.R.D.), to Northampton for an event in their Rockingham Library entitled “Demonstrating and exploiting repository value… a practical, hands on event, to inform advocacy and marketing activities“. Sponsored by the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme, and jointly hosted by the Universities of Northampton and Warwick, there are links to some of the presentations from the day, at:

• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/research/instrep/ir_value_event/

Julian has already reflected on the day on his blog:

• http://learninglab.lincoln.ac.uk/blogs/julian/2008/12/03/even-more-repository-advocacy/

This morning at Brayford, the (UoL) Repository Steering Group met for the third [fourth?] time, with advocacy on the agenda. We agreed to set up a small subgroup with one rep from each of L&LR, C.E.R.D., Research@Lincoln, and the internal communications office. This group will formulate a guerilla advocacy campaign for the I.R. for 2009, encompassing training, marketing materials, and engagement with faculties.

Paul

These are my specific objectives for the year ahead – this is where I’m going to take my priorities next.

• Complete, and document, the launch of Find it @ Lincoln
• Write a draft collection development policy to inform the shift from print to ‘e’
• Pilot digital-to-digital copying under the CLA extended licence
• Develop advocacy programme for Institutional Repository
• Investigate and make recommendations re: implementation of innovative discovery tools, e.g. OPAC wrapper
• Write a proposal for the full implementation of online reading lists across all Bb modules

Joss Winn from C.E.R.D. has put together a Netvibes ’start page’ for his Learning Lab projects, and included (on the Research section of the page), some useful ‘widgets’ of information from the Library, including our blog feed, the podcast tours of the GCW, and search boxes for the catalogue and for the Institutional Repository.

You can see it at:

• http://www.netvibes.com/thelearninglab#Research
  

from Research Office by David

Spotted on Bournemouth University’s Research Support blog:

“HEFCE has just published two technical reports on the process for the Research Excellence Framework [REF], Appraisal of Citation Data Sources and Development of Bibliometric Indicators of Research Quality.”

Blog link: http://bulib4research.blogspot.com/2008/09/research-excellence-framework-technical.html

Site links:

• http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2008/rd17_08/
• http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2008/rd16_08/

Paul

Last Tuesday, the 16th of September, I attended the first meeting of the University’s new Institutional Repository Steering Group.

The group has representatives from L&LR, ICT Services (formerly known as CS!), C.E.R.D., the Research Office, and the faculties, and is chaired by Prof. Andrew Hunter, Dean of Research.

Its job is to make recommendations relating to the management and development of the Institutional Repository, and to report to the University Research Policy Committee on issues relating to the I.R. and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – the successor to the RAE.

At the first meeting, we reviewed the I.R. policy, discussed the group’s terms of reference and membership, and drew up a list of issues for consideration, which included the scope of the repository project, copyright and IPR, bibliographic control [i.e. cataloguing!], advocacy and support for the faculties, and our use of bibliometric data (e.g. the Journal Citation Reports or eigenfactor) which will help inform the University in the run up to the next REF excercise.

Paul