This is what you might call taking your eye off the ball. The object is the
institutional repository because many institutions don't yet have one, and
those that do are looking for ways of getting more content into their IRs,
the highly relevant theme of this thread.
The purpose of the IR is to manage, provide access to, increase the
visibility of the *outputs of the institution*, particularly the research
outputs. It's a clear agenda, with clear benefits for the institution. IRs
did not exist nor were they possible before the advent of widely accessible
digital networks.
If you start linking it with every other institutional activity at this
stage, as Howard suggests, you risk losing that agenda with the result that
you will end up either without an IR or one without any useful volume of
content.
Howard's suggestion looks ok in principle - and I believe IR software is
likely to prove adaptable in terms of integration with other services - but
pragmatism and politics mean it is a recipe for losing sight of what is
new: the IR.
Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
At 09:52 17/01/2006, Howard Noble wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Different academic disciplines will require a range of customised user
>interfaces and facilities to be able to use repository services effectively.
>The trick is to talk about repository services rather than the marketing
>term 'institutional repository'. When we do this we can talk about the
>services that an organisation will share and how these services will
>communicate. So for example an organisation might aspire to have a single
>service for authentication, authorisation, group management etc It might
>implement a range of applications (DSpace, ePrints, Fedora) that use these
>'coomon' services. Then it might also stipulate that any file store/ content
>management system and/ or metadata management system must implement OAI to
>allow the sharing of metadata between disciplines (to encourage
>interdisiplinary research) and SRW/ SRU/ Z39.50 to allow federated search.
>
>Institutional repository is a marketing term that is not useful when we are
>drilling down to ask which repository services an organisation needs and
>exactly what constitutes these services.
>
>Anyone agree?
>
>Howard Noble
>University of Oxford
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Bryan Lawrence" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 9:32 AM
>Subject: Re: To do: Re: Repository content (17 Jan)
>
>
>Hi Folks
>
> > Firstly, the notion that one 'institutional repository' should hold all of
> > a university's e-objects is an absurd one, and generally recognized by my
> > audiences as soon as I say it.The present state of software does not
> > support such a scheme, nor are the characteristics of the objects anywhere
> > near uniform. A great deal of time and money is wasted by people who
> > haven't yet realized this simple fact. A university needs several
> > ‘e-repositories’ or ‘e- libraries’, whatever you call them.
>
>This resonated with me. I blogged about this some time ago:
>http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/03/31/function_creep_and_institutional_repositories
>
>But it's not just about software as that blog tries to say, the reality is
>that once IRs go outside documents into research data, the concept of
>preservation becomes a lot about having a designated user community and the
>(funded) ability to keep track of their wants and requirements. No
>institutional IR is ever going to be able to migrate all its e-objects, and
>shouldn't pretend that it can.
>
>Bryan
>--
>Bryan Lawrence
>Director of Environmental Archival and Associated Research
>Head of the NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre
>CCLRC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
>Phone +44 1235 445012; Fax ... 5848; Web: home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence
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