My earlier note about how the R word was mostly being used for
something else, and in particular for source code version control
repositories, has been swirling around in the back of my brain for a
few days, bumping into other stuff. In particular, I began to wonder
whether there are elements of the typical source code repository that
we could usefully use for our repositories. Now this thought is
neither new nor original; I remember commenting in a blog post in
August last year on Peter Murray-Rust's epiphany from April 2007
(http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=259) that SourceForge
was a repository. But I don't think I've seen the ideas contrasted
yet, say in the context of what IRs could usefully take from source
code repositories.
A lot of what goes into source code repositories is about managing
change: keeping track of versions, and ensuring that separate people
are not changing the same element at the same time. There are also
presumably sophisticated facilities for constructing what one might
call derivative products (compiled versions, libraries, etc; it's a
long time since I used one of these things in production!).
IRs and related repositories have traditionally not been about
change; they tend to be about maintaining a static version (I won't
say "preserving", as it appears some object to that idea). However,
the idea of moving the repository upstream into the researcher's
workflow, as in the idea of a Research Repository System (eg http://
digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2008/07/negative-click-positive-value-
research.html). This does imply managing change much more. Besides,
we're beginning to be troubled by multiple version problems, and we
certainly have derivative products (from simple Word -> PDF
transformations, to more unclear pre-print -> post-print relationships).
So my question is: has this comparison of IR platforms to source code
repository systems been done, or is anyone doing it?
--
Chris Rusbridge
Director, Digital Curation Centre
Email: [log in to unmask] Phone 0131 6513823
University of Edinburgh
Appleton Tower, Crichton St, Edinburgh EH8 9LE
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
On 10 Mar 2009, at 17:44, Chris Rusbridge wrote:
> I have [a twitter search] for "Repository OR Repositories". I just
> did a quick count; with around 160 tweets found in the past 2 days
> containing one of those words, only 14 had anything to do with the
> sort of repositories this list is interested in!
>>
>
> Most of the rest appear to be to do with SVN and git etc version
> control repositories. Quite a lot appear to be the simple
> dictionary meaning of places to store something.
>
> I hadn't quite realised how much we are overloading someone else's
> vocabulary with the R-word!
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