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On 30 Jan 2009, at 11:26, Phil Barker wrote: > While you can argue that YouTube, WordPress, ePrints etc all support > functions such as ingest, storage, management, access etc. the ways > that they do so will have little in common. What works for accessing > & disseminating video on YouTube won't work for accessing & > disseminating text documents on ePrints; what works for > administration on a personal/web2.0 site won't work for > administration on a centralized library system. In other words: what > Scott said, but at a finer level of detail. It might be worth asking > whether the requirements for every component vary when the media > type and formal/informal parameters are changed, but unless actual > repository systems are disaggregated into these components finding > the ones that didn't would be pretty academic. You have a good point - there are not only different media, which need different storage and delivery treatment, but there are also different channels, publication models and engagement mechanisms that are associated with each of these services. Nevertheless, I don't think that precludes us trying our hardest to build a flexible information environment that can coherently offer all of these things without unnecessarily limiting the user experience (Sorry, this is a learning repository - no video commentary allowed!) Having had the experience of working with a couple of JSIC learning- oriented repository projects in recent months, I have become convinced that this area (teaching and learning) has an enormous potential for the development of immediately useful services that can be delivered by a "general purpose" repository such as EPrints. The reason that I think teaching/learning might be such a fruitful domain is that there isn't an all-consuming paranoia about the right to use your own teaching materials, whereas copyright worries still stifle the development of research repositories. And if there's reusable content, then there's a whole range of possibilities that open up. I'm just beginning to realise that there are lots of interesting activities that repositories (teaching-style quasi-open-access repositories) could help educators with. For example - creating slides and other kinds of collections, managing their evolution over a number of years, finding interesting examples or illustrations and then obtaining permission for their use and then documenting that permission and then sharing the material with a local or international community of scholars. I don't think that "research repositories" have all the answers - even for research! But I do think that there are activities in teaching and learning for which they could be really useful. -- Les Carr