Hi Ken and Chris,
This is crunch time.
Does the Design Research Society REALLY mean that it includes 'design
research in all disciplines in which design is undertaken'?
If so, the size of a suitable ePrints repository is huge.
I set up an prototype ePrints repository myself a couple of years ago (on my
own servers) to explore doing exactly the task that has been proposed.
I have some guess ideas on some of the scale of numbers of documents in some
design disciplines. It is much larger that one would expect. Collections in
some professional institutions of some sub-fields of design (and a design
sub-field may have multiple institutions serving it) are already larger
than some university libraries.
University research is divided between basic, applied and clinical research.
A substantial amount of applied and clinical research is design research
along with some 'basic' research.
Say 10% of all publications are design research related and assume 1000
universities in the world suggests the repository size would be equivalent
to 10000% of the size of a repository for all subjects of a single
university. In addition, is the substantial amount of design research
outcomes created outside the university sector (think large software
design(Microsoft, IBM etc) and large international engineering design firms
(Exxon, Shell etc)). Much of this commercial research in well-defined design
arenas clearly lies in the remit of design research. Then add commercial
research undertaken by the up and coming new arenas of design such as
organisation design, design related to Law, government design etc that is
published by individuals and teams outside the university sector.
There are practical issues in terms of efficiency and useablilty. For
example, a design researcher, if a paper is to be accessible via a
repository outside a university internal systems, must enter the
publicaiton details three times altogether (the first is the real paper to
the publisher, the second is a separately prepared 'preprint' of an earlier
copy' of the paper than presented or published by the journal or conference,
and third is the re-uploading of the preprint copy and publication details
to the proposed DRS ePrints server.
There are also serious economic and environmental issues. The scale of costs
is large. Besides the scale of the costs involved is the energy use. The
scale of energy use would be expected to be similar to a networks operation
centre (server farm). The energy use of a NOC is (in the UK at least)
measured in 'Leicesters', i.e. multiples of the energy use of the City of
Leicester. As the Undisciplined! DRS2008 Conference will be in Sheffield
this year, perhaps we out to derive a conversion from 'Leicesters' to
'Sheffields' for DRS' ePrints repository - or perhaps 'Swinburnes'!
Bear in mind that much of the proposed plan is expensive simple duplication.
Many universities already use ePrints repositories. The whole purpose of an
ePrint repository system is that all individual repositories contribute
together into an integrated single network that is accessible from anywhere.
Simply using the existing ePrints repository system would make most sense.
Or as Chris said, if you haven't got one, then install one
The key issue for the DRS in defining a discipline of design research is to
identify a well established keyword/concept/index list. Myself and Ken and
others have been working on this for some time. It is not an easy task. As
an example, an institutional sub-field of design that has put considerable
effort into their online presence, making documents available and
developing a sound disciplinary keyword structure is the ACM. Their keyword
structure is available at http://oldwww.acm.org/class/1998/ccs98.txt This
was developed in multiple iterations from 1982.
Another practical point is effectiveness of access, I use both ePrints and
my own web based approaches using simple html and simple SEO. Conventional
html beats ePrints in accessibility - although ePrints is getting closer
(test - Google ' "Terence Love" design'
http://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Terence+Love%22+
design&btnG=Search&meta=).
Warm regards,
Terry
===
Dr. Terence Love
Love Web Services
Tel/Fax: +61 (0)8 9305 7629
Mobile: +61 (0)434975 848
[log in to unmask]
www.lovewebservices.com
===
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken
Friedman
Sent: Wednesday, 9 April 2008 5:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Offers ... Re: What should an ideal 'disseminator' look like?
Hi, Chris,
Provisionally, I'm ready to consider this kind of thing. We are rebuilding
our web site and expanding our capacity significantly for hosting design
research material. We have a working group developing the new site now for
launch in January 2009.
Before making a firm offer, I'd like to know what kind of server space this
would entail. Let's make a deal: if the DRS Council will put together a
small working group to state what is needed -- capacity, software, resources
-- I am ready to ask my web team to see if we can realize it.
Until I see the details, I won't make a final commitment, but on a
provisional basis, I am willing to host this at Swinburne Design.
You have an offer. Gather the facts and I will plow forward to see if I can
make the offer a reality.
Ken
Ken Friedman
Professor
Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
--
On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 21:56:15 +0100, Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Filippo A. Salustri wrote:
>> I was actually wondering if it might be advantageous to have such a
>> repository for design, rather than scattering it through various
>> institutional repositories.
>I have wondered if DRS could do something like that. However we are a
>small society and there is no guarantee that our own website will be
>maintained into the forseeable future so I would prefer that it could
>be hosted by a university on the Society's behalf.
>
>Any offers?
>
>This could be a very useful resource. For example I would like to find
>somewhere to archive historic material and old conference proceedings
>but my own university does not understand the idea of providing a
>useful archive as opposed to just supporting work by their own staff.
>
>best
>Chris
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