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Yesterday we ran several workshops designed to introduce the Leeds Met Repository (comprising PERSoNA and Streamline) as an integrated system-in-development and to have colleagues engage with some of the tools that will eventually (soon!) be incorporated into a complementary infrastructure surrounding the repository and facilitating easy and intuitive deposit, discovery and sharing of a myriad of different scholarly resources amongst academic colleagues bent on distributing their wares far and wide.

Note to self - might there be a trade off betwixt ambitious concept and project deliverable?

The plan was to deliver a short introductory presentation that contextualised the three projects before allowing participants to sit at a lap-top and interract with the tools we have made accessible from our new blog (see PERSoNA News for more info and link).

In retrospect I think that I was missing a crucial slide that might have more clearly illustrated how intraLibrary might fit within this infrastructure.  Also, it is not at all easy to succinctly describe the dual aim of our project (an Open Access research archive/Repository of RLOs) along with their respective issues and challenges when, frankly, many of the details are still to be worked out, but then that is where the end user comes in of course!

When let loose on a lap top, many made a bee line for intraLibrary itself.  Perfectly understandable, of course, and perfectly OK within the context of our workshop but it did throw into relief that the undoubted sophistication and flexibility of intraLibrary also equates to complexity and I found myself faced with a cohort of beginners at the bottom of a steep learning curve that I myself have only partly ascended.  Some of the questions led Dawn to wonder whether people had misunderstood and thought that we were responsible for developing the interface to intraLibrary itself - see Streamline News - and I’ll certainly be clearer next time (I’ll try to post that missing slide soon but might it look something like an evolved version of this?)

Having said this, people were definitely engaged and interested during and after the presentation with many keen to explore the potential of the system with me, especially with respect to RLOs and I wonder if it is now wise to disentangle the different types of content in order to more accurately target relevant groups of stakeholders - I just think the issues are too disparate and the fact that intraLibrary is the common underlying technology for storing and making them both available in the appropriate way is really irrelevant to the end user.

Janet made the point that, in the case of RLOs, we are perhaps confronted more by issues of changing academic culture; the arguments in favour of Open Access to research are relatively well established and most researchers would agree that they would like their published research to be as widely available, read and cited as possible.  For a number of reasons, this is not necessarily the case with Learning Objects - for a discussion of some of them see this EdSpace blog post by Hugh Davis of Southampton University.

I started each workshop by emphasising that the ultimate goal of the three projects is to facilitate engagement with the repository in as fluid and flexible manner as possible - not to impose another monolithic tool on people and expect them to use it (’cos they won’t!).  Towards the end of the final workshop, one colleague expressed the view that his own conception of The Repository was perhaps ‘blinkered’ though he could see how it would be useful for a very particular need of his own!!  I siezed upon this as precisely the type of thing we are looking for - tell me what you want to do, let’s see if we can do it, then we can show and tell others how useful it is!  I hope that if we are able to build some real use cases and exemplars we can start to build some inertia and that ongoing developments to our repository infrastructure will be informed by what people actually use and want and that we can approach a realisation of our goals - for now, I was encouraged by the enthusiasm of many of the participants and intend to engage with them as much as possible over the coming months.

The Edspace projec at Southampton asking similar questions to us about who will have access to RLOs:

http://blog.lsl.ecs.soton.ac.uk/edspace/2008/11/07/who-can-see-what/

Beth is making real progress with her dissertation and her outputs are looking really good.  There is the small matter of copyright however - Beth is quite happy for me to use her material/IPR but a lot of her data is from a questionnaire and in depth interviews with research staff who have given only verbal consent for their responses to be shared.  Rachel, the copyright clearance officer, suggested that we really need explicit written consent before I start posting interview transcripts (anonymous of course) to the blog.  Beth will go back to her subjects to get an autograph - in the meantime here is a spreadsheet of Beth’s that I can share - data on UK IRs

Yesterday I spoke to colleagues at the monthly TEL network meeting which, technical problems notwithstanding, was an opportunity to engage, in particular, with learning technologists who should prove invaluable as intermediaries back to their respective faculties.

I wasn’t actually able to show them intraLibrary itself as the network seemed to have developed bahavioural problems but I did show the search interface, described how we had come to this point and what further development work there is still to do on the interface and the associated infrastructure that will surround intraLibrary - a lot of interest in the PowerLink to X-stream.

It was also a chance to plug The Repository Day which is taking place at Old Broadcasting House on November 10th when colleagues are invited to participate in one of 4 workshops that I will be running throughout the day. There will be a software demonstration (I hope!) and folk will have the opportunity to use the system and to inform ongoing development and to try out some new tools produced by our collaborating projects Streamline and PERSoNA. I also hope that people will bring their own material for upload to the repository which can be copies of published research papers or Learning Objects that they have created and would like to share with colleagues.

At the meeting we were also shown the new ALT wiki - I’ve got myself an account and started building a repository page - there’s not much there as yet!

I can safely say that my interview technique needs some work.  Jeremy Paxman can relax.  For now.

In actual fact the SDF did not prove to be the easiest environment to interview academic staff as they were scurrying from workshop to workshop and not terribly amenable to interrogation during tea break.  I did manage to get some recorded material that should still serve as a useful starting point but I do need to think a little more about the questions.

Anyway, here is

My very first interview…

NB.  The lady in this interview HATES Wikis!

I’ve just had a very short but interesting meeting with a fast-talking chap from CISCO who is meeting various folk from around the university to discuss potential partnership opportunities.

Mike is bringing CISCO’s networking expertise to education and described the company’s vision of using computer technology and the internet to engage young learners in a more personalised manner than is currently facilitated by traditional, class based education.  I was immediately struck with potential synergies with PC3 (see previous post)

Also, CISCO have recently acquired WebEx Connect which the website describes as “the foundation for a comprehensive collaboration strategy that delivers instant collaboration for your employees and an extensible development platform for you.”  It certainly sounded like it might be highly relevant for PERSoNA and Mike will arrange a demo for us shortly.

I have to say that I really enjoyed the Staff Development Festival.  It got me away from my PC, interracting with folk from all over the University face to face and I can catagorically say that the current generation of social networking tools don’t even come close to this more traditional form of interraction!  The permenant stand in the marquee gave us a presence throughout the fortnight and I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a wide range of people from different faculties.  There was, however, variable interest from day to day with the Research Day, as one might expect, being the busiest but I was a little disappointed with a comparative lack of interest on the Carnegie Research Institute Day.

I’ve been given some full text papers to deposit and will follow up on contacts made to secure more still; a lot of interest also in a repository of Learning Objects and we should be able to get some good quality LO content over the next few weeks.

It was very useful also to get to know colleagues from the University Research Office in a less formal setting - previous contact has mainly been in meetings or via email.  Our stands were adjacent (for synergy!) and Babita has agreed to join me in advocacy presentations to faculty staff over the coming months which I think will be extremely useful in helping to get our message accross - and B is, no doubt, more familiar than I with the bureaucratic idiosyncrasies of the Leeds Met research community.

It’s now of pressing importance that metadata schema and taxonomical structure are stable so that we can start uploading content without undue fear of it being dislodged.  Unsurprisingly the academic in the street has not expressed a particularly strong view and this comes very much under a librarian’s remit - Wendy and I will sit down next week with two colleagues and I’m fairly sure we’ll be looking at Library of Congress Subject Headings as the main organisational structure; I’ve already added a skeleton taxonomy based on the top level of LoCSH which is now sitting alongside JACS and Leeds Met faculties (N.B. one of the features of the node based classification in intraLibrary is that an object can be classified under multiple taxonomies)

There are also work flow issues to consider and you would, perhaps, want a professional librarian/cataloguer to ensure consistency of classification, especially under the LoCSH so may be we’d ask an academic to classify just under faculty and then send the object to a librarian’s workflow for more accurate classification under LoCSH before it is published to the library.

And then there is the manner in which I am currently using intraLibrary’s collections for content by faculty - I originally adopted this approach as Mike T suggested it would be the easiest way facilitate a demo browse tree in his modification of the search interface but we now need to decide whether it would be more appropriate for faculty to go in a metadata field - probably not; it’s not a simple DC field that would be much use for external system searching and using collections in this way probably means we could lose the faculty classification hierarchy altogether and facilitate a more transparent workflow (using collections) to ensure objects are easily identifiable by faculty which is only really useful to us in any case.

In outline then, MIGHT it look like this:

The only taxonomy in intraLibrary is LoCSH; collections stay as they are now, one for each faculty and one for ALL Learning Objects (i.e. they go in one collection and are not distinguishable by faculty)

When an academic uploads a research paper (a challenge all in itself!) they need to specify a collection (i.e. a faculty) as part of the workflow, enter very basic metadata (title, author[s]) and upload; they DON’T classify - it is then passed to a librarian who augments metadata appropriately and classifies it under LoCSH before publishing it to the library.  (N.B. what if faculty names change and these collections are set in stone?)

When someone uploads a Learning Object they need to specify the Learning Object collection as part of the workflow, enter very basic metadata (title, author[s]) and upload; they DON’T classify - it is then passed to a librarian who augments metadata appropriately and classifies it under LoCSH before publishing it to the library.

…all of this for the meeting next week.

Well, I’ve set my stall.  Almost.  A couple of Innovation North tablecloths, posters, leaflets and my brand new recoil stand.  Adjacent to the University Research Office for synergy.  It’s missing something though, je ne sais qua…it needs someone with a bit more artistic flair than I…

One activity that I intend to carry out during the Festival is ad hoc interviews with a cross section of colleagues about their understanding and use of web 2.0.  I plan to be relatively informal - grab a digital recorder and wander around with my mic like John Sargeant - then I can edit the results and post on here as a podcast; though I will also try to apply the principles of IPA and extract some meaningful data that we can then use as a springboard for more detailed exploration.

Leeds Met is a University of Festivals, we are often told, and the next fortnight will be the Staff Development Festival which will provide a unique opportunity to promote The Repository.  And I’m going Scuba diving, albeit in a swimming pool.

All the repository pieces are now in place and I intend to demo the search interface and the repository proper, presenting it as a semi-blank canvas that now needs to be painted upon by the University community.  I’ve already had some feedback from Jonathan Long, Director of the Carnegie Research Institute and a member of the consultancy group who would like a search to return formal Harvard references for each item emphasising that one of the reasons for setting up the repository is to increase the number of citations - the interface is just ‘out of the box’ at the moment and returning results in the manner of the IRISS interface - I’ll gather input over the next fortnight and Mike should be able to do some customisation when we have a clearer idea of what people want.  I might even have a go myself although, with no knowledge of php, I can’t make head nor tail of the site files, my web skills having stalled at basic HTML, CSS and (very basic) Java Script.  Mike has already added browse functionality which is, for the moment, based on faculty structure - I’ve set up a collection within intraLibrary for each faculty and it is these that Mike is using to generate the results although it should also be possible to use metadata fields - I think we will map DC ’subject’ onto LOM ‘keyword’.  It might be tricky to incorporate numbers of records after browse links and I’m waiting to see what Mike has to say on this.

Anyway, for now, I have 5 citations per faculty which is adequate for initial demonstrations and I’m working on some full text content - several of the citations I’ve uploaded are RoMEO green/yellow so it’s just a matter of getting hold of author versions.

As for promotional material, I’ve ordered a big purple recoil stand similar to that for the Library and I’ve three info sheets to print up in quantity:

The Repository is an introduction to the project and to IRs specifying our dual remit for the Leeds Met repository.

Open Access: What’s in it for you? emphasises the evidence that OA increases citation (using a graph from Steve Lawrence’s seminal article Online or Invisible? (2001) which is a bit out of date but by far the clearest visual representation I have been able to find.)

And

Copyright presents a very simple flowchart of the (self)-archiving process.

I shall also try to put together a narrated presentation to run when I’m not there.  A couple of lap-tops and we’re away!

Incidentally, here is a link to the search interface:

http://repos-dev.leedsmet.ac.uk/main/index.php

(Currently only accessible from a Leeds Met IP)

The Repository is really starting to take shape; the search interface has now been installed on a development server (as discussed previously, we are using the IRISS SRU client) and is returning very satisfying results on my test content. Now we can start adding the extra functionality (browse, advanced search) - well Mike T can at any rate, and my more technically inclined colleagues - and then to customise the look and feel, though Mike has already added an enormous Leeds Met Rose!

Ongoing development of the interface will also feed into PERSoNA - in a meeting today with John and Mike, Wendy and I discussed one initial approach being to embed the search box/additional search functionality from the interface into a google app (feeding into Leeds Met’s developing partnership with Google) or some kind of generic plug-in or widget. I’ll try to expand on this at some point on PERSoNA News and ask for some pertinent blog input from John and Mike.

And I’ve uploaded my first research paper! A colleague in the library has a paper published in the Reference Services Review - which is a subsidiary of Emerald - and RoMEO green; Do Academic Enquiry Services Scare Students? (This link to the Emerald full text, not the author’s version in The Repository.)

At the moment I am very much focussed on the Staff Development Festival in September and have also been uploading citation information for demonstration purposes - I hope to use the Festival to encourage folk to supply full text copies of their research papers which can then be uploaded in line with publishers’ copyright transfer agreements and we can finally start building that representative body of content. I’ve set up a basic taxonomy within intraLibrary based on Leeds Met faculties and intend to upload 5-10 citations per faculty which I’m linking through to publishers’ abstract pages where possible. This should give us the opportunity to review metadata and get a preliminary idea of the workflow as well as illustrating to people why they might want to release copies of their work from behind subscription barriers (look, there can be links to your work all over the web but you can’t get any further than the abstract without a subscription fee.) The final choice of taxonomy should also be informed by demonstrations to academic staff - we already know that the steering group does not want to base it on faculties as the major organisational structure.

Mike has said that he can do some very preliminary customisation of the search interface before the festival to illustrate how the external browse functionality might work - this will be based on the taxonomies as they currently appear within intraLibrary and, given the short amount of time, will be for demonstration purposes only and probably won’t return dynamic results but should give people the opportunity to visualise the interface and comment on its development.

A fortnight’s leave away from the repositorysphere I found takes some adjustment and though I didn’t go anywhere near cyberspace for 8 whole days I did need something to wean me off as the rain lashed against the Cornish countryside.

Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything is an insightful read, much of which is relevant to repositories, EMERGE and JISC in general. Some of it isn’t; like Boeing building their jets collaboratively and a gold mining company putting their trade secrets into the public domain and apparently crowdsourcing for insights on where to sink their next shaft. It worked. Spectacularly. And I’m struggling to encourage comment on my blog but then I’m not offering thousands of dollars in prize money!

The link above is to the book on Amazon; since coming back online I’ve also been looking at the website http://www.wikinomics.com/

For the record, holiday reading also included the wonderful Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale and the slightly heavy going Headlong by Michael Frayn which I did enjoy in spite of my lack of knowledge of art history (my enjoyment was augmented, incidentally, by being able to easily access reproductions of the Dutch masterpieces mentioned on…the world wide web!)

Now about that prize money, where’s the project budget?

Or IPA to its friends…

I’ve just been listening to Linda Creanor’s Keynote from the recent Emerge online conference (23-25 June 2008). Linda was talking about the JISC funded LEX project and I think that the methodology (IPA) that she describes might be just what I am looking for to generate that elusive user input for PERSoNA.

As its fundamental starting point IPA adopts an experiential (phenomenological) focus (the participant as expert) upon which the researcher imposes their own interpretive process.

The principles of IPA are that it is an inductive approach (bottom up rather than top down); that it does not test hypotheses and a priori assumptions are avoided; it provides opportunities for participants to tell their own stories, in their own words, and in as much detail as possible; it aims to capture and explore the meanings that participants assign to their experiences.

A successful analysis is:

• Interpretive (and thus subjective) so the results are not given the status of facts
• Transparent (grounded in example from the data)
• Plausible (to participants, co-analysts and general readers)

Here is the full LEX Methodology Report

One of the selling points of intraLibrary was the PowerLink to X-stream (Blackboard Vista) which, as I understand it, will enable a tutor to link directly to an object stored in the repository without the need to upload it to the X-stream module.

We hope to be able to use the repository to store and make available digitised books in line with the CLA licence. Our copyright officer has outlined her ideal requirements from the combined system as follows:

• Closed, secure storage space for digitised files (“Digital Copies”)
• Tutor is provided with a link to a Digital Copy stored within the repository
• The link can be added to an X-stream module (to connect between VLE & Intralibrary)
• Student doesn’t need to login to access Digital Copy when already logged into X-stream
• The Digital Copy remains within the repository
• Library maintains control over the Digital Copies; the Digital Copies can be removed after end of course

She points out that there may well be copyright implications associated with using the repository in this way:

The CLA licence states:

Digital Copies may not be stored, or systematically indexed, with the intention of creating an electronic library or similar educational learning resource

On the face of it this seems to preclude the use of a repository but might it be allowed if the storage is entirely secure i.e. it cannot be accessed by students (or unauthorised staff) without a PowerLink to the VLE which will only make the digital copy available in accordance with the licence - that is, as though it had simply been uploaded to the VLE?

I suppose it would be an indexed, electronic library of sorts but purely for archival purposes - for authorised library staff to have a centralised, searchable store of digital copies that can be linked to directly from X-stream without needing to email the actual resource to an individual tutor so he can upload it to X-stream. Given the flexible nature of intraLibrary (another selling point) it should be straightforward to federate access to a particular collection (digitised books) and a particular user group (librarians) in this way but is the PowerLink secure? Will staff be able to share the link (which is ok but only if we know about it and can record it)? Will tutors just be linking to the resource and not actually copying the file from the repository into X-stream?

I need to learn more about how the PowerLink actually works - and X-stream itself for that matter. Not to mention the CLA licence and copyright!

The staff development festival in September is a unique opportunity to promote the repository and our agenda for yesterday’s meeting aimed to get some much needed input from the steering group before the quiet month of August.

Item 1. Recap of previous meetings:

Documentation approved.

Item 2. Update on progress with intraLibrary

2a. Configuration:

Search interface (SRU):

Getting the search interface on line is the first priority - my request for the server is still pending with IMTS but I hope we can install the IRISS interface as is within the next few weeks (JohnG is installing it on a local server as we speak which can then be tranferred to our Leeds Met domain when it is available) and I think it will be straightforward to switch the CSS to get a very rough Leeds Met branding.

Content structure:

This is also crucial and needs to be put in place ASAP. Several members of the group expressed the opinion that it should not be based on faculties which tend not to be fixed entities within the university; it was also thought that such a schema would not reflect institutional emphasis upon cross-disciplinary research. There was consensus that organisation at the top level should be by content type (i.e. Research/Learning Objects) but exactly what hierarchy should be employed beneath is still not clear (library of congress subject headings?). We also need to make a decision on what other material types will be accomodated in the prototype (e.g. Dissertations and Theses)

Landing screen:

Technical challenges aside, the current conception of the landing screen is that it will essentially use the same template as the search interface i.e. it will be branded the same and share the same look and feel; it will also share some of the same functionality and link back ‘home’ to the search interface.

Given the close relationship between these configuration issues, a sub-group was identified that will liaise as necessary to develop the content structure; branding; look and feel; usability and will also inform the technical development of the additional functionality.

2b. Policies:

The group was briefed on the types of policies that need to be developed (see last post) with emphasis on the fact that the ’standard’ institutional repository policies may be insufficient for our requirements given our wider remit (i.e. not just research outputs). A sub-group was identified that will liaise as necessary to develop suitable policies.

2c. URL:

The suggestion mooted - repository.leedsmet.ac.uk - was deemed suitable by the group

Item 3. Content for the repository:

To discuss method of contacting researchers / research active staff and soliciting content

Review of draft correspondence for research active staff and discussion of when this would most usefully be disseminated; consensus that it would have the greatest impact some time after the staff development festival. Content was broadly approved though it was suggested that greater emphasis be placed on the benefits of OA to citation and the increased importance of citation under proposals for REF (to replace RAE).

Emphasis was placed on the need to identify and recruit interested parties within specific faculties/research groups to help drive the advocacy process to the wider community; liaison with University Research Office for appropriate contact lists.

(NB. This is an ongoing process that is already underway but will increase in profile with the implementation of the prototype system.)

The Staff development festival confirmed as a key opportunity.

There was discussion whether content would be full text only or would also comprise citation of material that we do not have copyright permission to make available as full text (i.e. bibliographic reference only). Given that including such material will enable us to ‘hit the ground running’ and considering the increasing importance of citation data/bibliometrics for the RAE / REF the consensus was that citations should be included at the outset.

Item 4. Authentication

It was emphasised to the group that we can be fully functional as a mediated repository without the need for authentication in the first instance.

A representative from IMTS was able to inform the discussion in the light of recent feedback from Intrallect and will continue to liaise as necessary.

Item 5. Integration with other Leeds Met systems

In light of the decision to include citations as well as full text, an important early integration will be with SFX such that citations in the repository can incorporate a link to Leeds Met holdings of subscribed material; hardly Open Access as it will only be available to authenticated staff and students but will offer another local route to that material and can also be used to generate data on OA friendly publishers and perhaps to raise awareness of OA.

The PowerLink to X-stream should also be a priority such that it is operational at the earliest opportunity.

NB. Precise functionality of the PowerLink still needs to be determined.

Other systems flagged up for integration were iTunesU and the streaming server; pending investigation!

The next meeting of the steering group will take place after the staff development festival, probably late September/early October.

It is now established that we will be using the SRU interface developed by IRISS as the public search interface for the repository. I hope to install the current incarnation of the interface on a Leeds Met server very soon and two of my more technically adept colleagues are looking at the recently released code in order to scope the extent of the development work that will be required to incorporate advanced search and browse functionality. As this page will effectively be the repository by proxy (the URL that I have requested is repository.leedsmet.ac.uk - intraLibrary itself will require a different URL) we also need to think about what other elements it might need to comprise; authenticated log-in to intraLibrary itself (yet to be determined if this will be the appropriate route for self-archiving; it will certainly be one route but we may also need an authenticated link to a SWORD interface for example); About this repository; FAQs; Operational policies; Contact etc. It is also likely that this page will form the basis of - or at least link to - the PERSoNA web-tool(s).

What about learning objects which will require their own taxonomy and a different workflow for deposit (via SWORD perhaps)? Should they be incorporated into the search interface at all or will users need to authenticate into intraLibrary to browse? This would seem to make sense given intraLibrary is a specialised LO repository and access to this type of content is more likely to be restricted to Leeds Met staff.

I’ve adapted my schematic recently posted on PERSoNA News to try to represent what the repository might now look like:

The customisation of the search interface is one of the issues that I am taking to the steering group meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Other decision that needs to be ratified by that group are:

• The URL for the search interface
• The URL for intraLibrary
• The taxonomy system that we shall use within intraLibrary and that the search interface (SRU) will map directly on to (at least for research)

Other items on the agenda are:

• Development of operational policies for the repository

I have so far drafted the following:

1. Metadata policy
2. Data policy
3. Takedown policy
4. Content policy
5. Submission policy
6. Preservation policy

These are all fairly standard in terms of Open Access repositories and, with the exception of 3. Takedown policy, were all generated using the OpenDOAR Policies Tool, nevertheless, it may be necessary to identify specialised sub-groups to review these drafts to ensure they are appropriate for the Leeds Met repository; the issue is more complex of course due to our repository incorporating Learning Objects as well as research.

• Content for the repository

There needs to be a discussion about how best to contact researchers and research ac tive staff to ask them for appropriate material for the repository. In the first instance, in line with the project plan, this will be their own versions of published research articles that are allowed to be self-archived into an OA repository. I have begun to identify such material and have drafted correspondence for review at the meeting.

• Authentication

With the implementation of the search interface (SRU) it will not be necessary to authenticate in order to browse for research content (essential for OA). It will, however, be necessary to generate authenticated accounts for Leeds Met staff that require access to intraLibrary itself and these will need to be integrated with LDAP. Though much will depend on the precise configuration of our integrated repository systems it is likely that, in time, all staff will require an authenticated account whether to deposit material, search for learning objects or access their internal workspace. There are also authentication issues pertaining to the potential use of SWORD/other external interfaces such that only authorised Leeds Met staff/students can deposit material/access federated content. I am still unsure of some of the issues involved and require input from Intrallect and IMTS.

• Integration with other Leeds Met systems

This is an area where it is perhaps still too early to think much beyond priorities and broad timescales. Given that there is already a plug-in for X-stream and that this is functionality that can be used as a selling point to the university community it makes sense to focus on this integration first. Also, perhaps, library online and the portal.

Damyanti Patel and Owen Stephens summarise a presentation given by Bill Hubbard at the JISC Innovation forum here

As they say, nothing new perhaps but a concise review of the status quo and the big ideas for moving forward:

“OK - where are we going?

• Exposure for harvesting
• Linkage to departmental pages
• Linkage to personal pages (we do this at Imperial)
• REF - citation and usage analysis
• Beyond pdf - text and data-mining
• Virtual Research Environments
• Embedding into institutional workflows
• Repository as a set of services
• Staffing and management
• Funder mandate compliance

Bill drawing analogy between library processes and repository - getting a book into the library depends on many different people being involved, inside and outside the library, ‘Repositories’ need to be embedded to this degree (I’d argue, and think Bill would agree, that it isn’t ‘repositories’ but services that need to be embedded - afterall with the library analogy we don’t talk about it in terms of the library management system)”

intraLibrary is designed as a learning object repository and it is only now becoming clear just what is involved so that the platform will also function as an Open Access repository of research.

Access to learning objects is generally federated. For example, in order to access resources in JORUM it is neccessary to authenticate via Athens (soon to be Shibboleth) or by a UK Access Management Federation log-in mechanism and, so far as I know, it is not possible to search the repository externally via a search engine. As the very point of an Open Access repository is to make research discoverable and accessible on the public internet this is obviously not desirable! It is, I think, relatively straightforward to expose metadata out to search engines via the OAI-PMH but the majority of search engines no longer support the protocol and we really need to allow the full text to be crawled by Googlebot and other search engine spiders which, I suspect, will not be able to get past the authentication gateway (need more info on this). Moreover, if an external user does come to the repository via Google it will not be possible for them to search content without first authenticating into the system - not very open. Notwithstanding the fact that about 80% of traffic comes to a repository via search engines (assuming they can index content in the first place) we obviously also want an accessible search interface aswell.

The potential solution to these problems that I am currently investigating is to use a seperate, web-based SRU interface which sits outside the repository and is accessible on the public internet.

As part of the CD-LOR project Intrallect have already developed a basic SRU interface which, in turn, has been substantially improved by a third party - IRISS interface here - who have made the code available under an open source licence. The IRISS interface is still fairly basic and does not incorporate all of the functionality that we require – it is essentially a search box only and, for example, would not facilitate browsing the research collection by faculty. It should be reasonably straightforward to customise the interface to incorporate the functionality that we require; we essentially need a series of hyperlinks that map onto the internal repository structure and that will return the appropriate queries. I also need to clarify if such an approach will enable Googlebot and other search engine spiders to crawl the full text thus making the content searchable on the open web.

For each object, intraLibrary generates a public URL which can be linked to directly - on the open web and with no need for authentication. However, a further issue is that, due to the way that intraLibrary works, a query return (either from a search engine or the SRU interface) will link directly to the resource itself – i.e. a PDF of a research article will open immediately in the browser window. When facilitating Open Access to research this is undesirable for several reasons and we require some sort of “landing screen” that can provide context and basic information (abstract, copyright info, whether the paper has been refereed); indeed, there will often be a legal requirement to provide copyright information with many publishers also stipulating that there must also be a link to the published version of the paper. Precisely how we will resolve this issue is yet to be determined; it might be possible to embed a link to the PDF into some sort of HTML template and have this template returned at the public URL?

Watch this space…

By working closely with Intrallect and with a little ingenuity I am confident that these issues will be resolved and that we have, in intraLibrary, an excellent solution to our diverse needs.

I am excited by some of the material being generated by Masters student Beth Hall and we’d both like to thank all those staff and postgraduates (48 so far!) who have taken the time to complete her questionnaire (there’s still time if you haven’t yet got round to it!).

Beth is in the process of conducting follow-up interviews with those that have agreed.

I will post a couple of her early outputs to this blog:

Here is a graphical summary of some of the data gathered by the questionnaire [N=48]

Here are the questions that will comprise the face to face interviews.

I should emphasise that these are early outputs and very much represent work in progress; nevertheless there is some useful data that we can use as a foundation for ongoing advocacy and I look forward to reading Beth’s dissertation when it is written.

Drop this here for later:

http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2008/07/07/research-study-how-is-web-20-viewed-by-academics/

On the back of the Emerge presentation, and as an earlier adjunct to the Streamline meeting, a group of us sat down on Tuesday to review PERSoNA and think about precisely what tools the project needs to deliver.

A question:

Should we be looking at a web tool that facilitates appropriate social networking and resource sharing that sits outside the repository rather than embed tools within intraLibrary itself?

John began by sketching a very rough outline of the repository projects; I have taken this diagram and tried to flesh it out to more fully represent my own conception of what we are aiming at with our interlinked projects:

This approach to PERSoNA would allow intraLibrary to be configured simply as a repository that we can annexe to our web tool - whatever that may be.

Note: Might a potential problem with this approach be integration with the Web 2.0 technologies and personalisation tools already present in intraLibrary 3.0 (RSS, rating system, user comments, add to favourites)?

Anyway, if this should be the approach that we follow, the crucial questions are perhaps:

• What sort of tool or tools would be useful enough so that people would naturally engage with them?

• How could the use of such a tool or tools promote use of the repository?

One idea is to somehow embed the repository and its peripheral infrastructure (i.e. the PERSoNA tool) into the scholarly workflow such that deposit/discovery/sharing of resources is fully integrated into the process of writing and publishing a research paper or producing/repurposing a learning object.

Note: Other projects are exploring similar themes: The EMBED project at Cranfield University aims “to increase understanding of how repositories can be used to support research and learning, integrating them fully into academic processes.”

Dawn suggested a WIKI as a possible solution: it allows collaboration - often essential in research - and could in theory be used to write a research paper which could then automatically be deposited to the repository at the appropriate point in the workflow. Janet, however, was quick to point out that a while a WIKI may be useful to collaborate on research, it is not, in fact, an appropriate technology for writing a research paper citing lack of adequate version control as a major drawback.

Creative suggestions notwithstanding, I’m acutely aware that we really need more user input - what do academics actually want? I still think there is mileage in assessing individual web habits and other factors that contribute to workflow inertia - by interview perhaps?

Janet referred to a post-graduate project that might provide us with a useful opportunity; as I understand, a group of postgraduates hope to produce their own research journal and utilise a sort of informal peer review process to assess quality. Perhaps we can collaborate with the project; a potential user-group to help us develop a useful and usable virtual, social environment that facilitates easy deposit of appropriate material into the repository which is then made available as an e-journal.

I’ve just been listening to the recording from the presentation given last week, in my absence, by John Gray. I’m really sorry I missed it as there was some really interesting perspectives arising in the discussion and I must congratulate John on his presentation and making sense of my slides!

I shall try to summarise some of the discussion here but just to recap, John gave an overview of our three related projects and how they link together via a single repository platform (intraLibrary) that we will be using as both an Open Access research archive AND a repository of learning objects (AND, in time, we hope, other digital materials). Traditionally these two main types of material have been stored in seperate systems and, thus far, the uptake of both types of repository has been limited. We hope that the PERSoNA project, through investigating the use of social networking/Web 2.0 technology within and around the repository, will help to promote its use amongst our academic community. I also wanted to look at an example of a successful Web 2.0 “repository” - Slideshare - to see what we could learn and maybe apply to our institutional repository.

For the purposes of this summary I will insert (anonymous) verbatim comments from the text chat - if anyone has any concerns about their IPR please let me know - I’m just working on a take down policy for the repository!

A pertinent place to start might be with a question raised by Isobel who suggested that while the need for a repository was institutionally defined, there was not a great sense that potential users felt any clear need themselves, hence our emphasis on fitting in with folks’ existing workflow.

Janet agreed with this (as do I) with the proviso that, in her view, people really need to see and understand the benefits of such systems before they will commit - chicken and egg paradox. This is certainly the case with repositories dedicated to Open Access and much of my advocacy work to academics will be extolling the benefits of OA. This is THE crucial point, of course, that it is all very well developing new technologies but persuading people of the benefits and then to engage is much more difficult; we will only succeed in engaging users if we map onto what people actually need as individuals.

“we need to address how people work not how we want them to work!”

The statement “Build them and they will come” that I used in the slides has become almost a cliche in the development of Open Access Repositories (of research) and very much typified the first wave of development at the beginning of the noughties with the attitude that OA and self-archiving into an IR is such a good idea and so easy with so many benefits that if we make the technology available, people will use it and while this optimism, in fact, has been found wanting people have “come” to a whole array of Web 2.0 “repositories” with the likes of Slideshare, Flickr and del.icio.us attracting millions of users - including academics. My reluctance to refer to these tools as pure repositories (without the quotation marks) is telling - the point was aptly illustrated when Janet asked whether or not those present actually used a repository. Very few it seemed, and some uncertainty.

“depends whether delicious counts?”

“what about social repositories?”

“Depends what counts as defined as a repository”

When the definition was explicitely expanded to iclude del.icio.us et al, however, many more participants had a smile on their little yellow face and the conclusion seems to be that people are using the “informal” repositories but not the “formal” institutional repositories.

Dawn asked why.

“Formal repositories are tied to publishers’ business models”

“the community” (i.e. There is a community around “informal” repositories but not around “formal” IRs)

“Ease of use”

“low threshold - technically”

“easy, organised and available - to manage digital stuff…”

“simple user interface”

“no formal channels to follow”

“openness”

NB. Sharing resources did not seem to be a major factor which is interesting - though it was conceded by a few when prompted!

There was a very interesting verbal contribution from Jim Hensman right at the very end of the session that I can’t really do justice here - if Jim should pass by these parts perhaps he could comment - but his thrust was the complexity of the multiple themes we (as a repository community) are examining and how they are not, perhaps, easily compatible - individual workflow/personalisation; social dimensions/sharing/collective tagging; institutional requirements. This observation was reassuring on a personal level and puts my desperate attempts at constructing complicated fllowcharts into some perspective!

As Jim observed, the Leeds Met repository, Streamline and PERSoNA projects, collectively, give us a rare opportunity to explore some of these cross-cutting themes in a more integrated way than is generally the case.