[Forwarded from Peter Burnhill, EDINA by Les Carr]

First, a thank you to Les for reflecting upon the importance of ensuring continuity of access to OERs, and to others for opening up that debate.

Jorum began its life as a keepsafe for learning materials generated by JISC projects - and other publicly funded initiatives - knowing that project teams disband - and this keepsafe function for Jorum continues, underpinning the Find/Share/Discuss verbs now promoted in more obvious ways.  More on that discussed below.

As far as the resources released under the UKOER Pilot Programme, JISC/HEA gave those who released material the option of either depositing that in Jorum as means of access or of having those material 'represented' in Jorum. Â In essence this means that, in addition to acting as the national repository for learning materials, Jorum becomes the place to register at first point of public issue of OER for UK HE/FE, complete with the link to where the content is available if not deposited in Jorum. Â That has immediate value and importance in enabling those resources to be found and included in the national showcase - and those that are highly thought of win prizes :)

For Jorum's Collection and Development Policy, which describes what Jorum will and can host, see www.jorum.ac.uk/docs/pdf/CollectionDevPolicy2010.pdf

UKOER project groups and others have commented on the advantage in depositing, not just registering, with Jorum: that putting resources in Jorum - as well as in local repositories - brings the potential of more attention through aggregation and the exposure that Jorum gives to Googe and the like. [The presentation at the recent ALT-C event by Jorum's
Nicola Siminson provided evidence of this from Jorum users.]

Of course depositing in Jorum and Jorum's keep-safe responsiblity also goes a long way towards ensuring continuity of access. Although 'statement of archival responsibility'  is not yet a metadata field in Jorum we could explore this but this is a matter for discussion with others, including the funders.  This would however enable those who issue and register OER content to declare what steps they are taking to ensure that there is continuing access to that content - with "deposit in Jorum" to be one answer.

Of course, there is more to digital preservation that just maintaining an object in a current and continuing repository. Â [Insert large discussion about .... , etc.]

It is worth noting, for those who may not know, that EDINA and Mimas are long-lasting organisations hosted at two long lasting institutions which have exercised responsibility for the sector as a whole. Â It is no co-incidence that Jorum is developed and delivered jointly by those two JISC national academic data centres. And both Mimas and EDINA plan to be supporting Jorum for a long time to come. Should the day come when that is not the case then the contents of Jorum would be migrated to an appropriate long term archival store.

All this is to amplify that the matter of continuity of access and digital preservation of learning materials and of OER in particular is very important, and that Jorum takes its keepsafe mandate seriously. Â 

We would recommend that those who have only registered content with Jorum consider how they wish to act with respect to archival responsibility and consider where appropriate that they take the next step and deposit their content into Jorum. The Jorum support team exists to assist with this process.

Peter Burnhill & Jackie Carter (as Co-Directors)
for the Jorum Team




On Thu, 16 Sep 2010, Leslie Carr wrote:

> 
> On 15 Sep 2010, at 16:29, Louise Egan wrote:
>> The recent ALT-C 2010 conference saw the final six winners in the Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition present their resources, and receive their prizes, with those taking the top three places announced at the gala dinner
>> 
>> 
> This competition is designed to promote people sharing learning resources, and that's fantastic.
> 
> Since this is a repositories list though, I feel duty bound to point out that none of the six winners' resources are actually deposited in the Jorum repository (just metadata records with a web link to the actual location). While there's nothing wrong with that (sharing links to material is a perfectly fine, noble and helpful activity, especially in education) I can't help but feel alarmed that the winning resource is not located on an institution's servers, but on the author's personal website which is headed with the comment "This website is currently under development. In the meantime, you might like to check out my page at academia.edu instead."
> 
> Since one of the raisons d'etre of repositories is to provide persistent, safe access to valuable material, perhaps the competition organisers might work with the winner to obtain a copy of the winning resource, in case her website development takes a turn for the unexpected :-)
> --
> Les (preservation curmudgeon) Carr

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 Peter Burnhill
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