In the last year or so, repositories have become more embedded in their institutions, in particular with their contribution to research evaluation and reporting. The school focused on how we can continue to demonstrate the value of the repository to the institution without losing the impetus to make that research open access. Thanks to the speakers for their coverage of the issues and practical ideas as to how to do this. And thanks also to the partcipants who came up with soem really creative solutions.

Presentations and workshop reports will be posted on the event web page in the next week or so.

Representatives from repositories and research offices attended a Repositories Support Project event event in Nottingham on 19^th July. As well as top class presentations, attendees had the opportunity to discuss issues in break out groups and talk to software providers at the Exhibition.

The keynote presentation was provided by Simon Kerridge from ARMA ( Association of Research Managers and Administrators). After the break, members of the RePOSIT Project presented on the findings and led small group discussions on the main issues. The European perspective, euroCRIS and CERIF, was presented by Mark Cox from Kings College and Valerie McCutcheon from the University of Glasgow provided an institutional view. EPrints users had the opportunity to see the latest plans from Dave Tarrant. A final Q & A panel raised interesting issues around the different models of integrating repository and research management functions.

The presentations are available here and you can also read a number of blog posts including our own:

http://rspproject.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/rsp-event-repositories-and-cris-working-smartly-together/

http://ukcorr.blogspot.com/2011/07/repositories-and-cris-working-smartly.html

http://uollibraryblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/event-review-repositories-and-cris-working-smartly-together/

http://jiscreposit.blogspot.com/

There have been some changes over recent months in the RSP Team. These are summarised below.

Jackie Wickham took over the role of Team Coordinator after Dominic Tate left in November 2010 (to head up the repository at Royal Holloway). Many of you will have met Emily Nimmo who joined in January to lead on our exciting events programme. Laurian Williamson started work just this month coordinating the JISC Repositories: Take up and Embedding Projects. Bill Hubbard, who needs no introduction, is Project Director. And finally, Rob Ingram, our Technical Developer, left the team in April to take up a post with the Learning Technology Team here at Nottingham.

Jackie Wickham said: “The new team members bring a wealth of experience with them and we all look forward to working with the repository community over the next year.”

RSP support is available for all HEIs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Consultancy visits are available to institutions with long-standing repositories as well as to those institutions in the start-up phase through our programme of repository health-checks. Please contact support@rsp.ac.uk or 0845 257 6860 for more information.

This event will be of less benefit to attendees of the event last year and priority will be given to participants who did not attended this.

Many UK institutions will be in receipt of funding from the European Commission as part of the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7). Publications in any of seven pilot areas of research must be made available as Open Access in either institutional or subject repositories and the OpenAIRE project aims to harvest content from repositories into a central portal. OpenAIRE has issued guidance that repositories should meet on order to support this harvesting. In addition, it has established a repository facility for researchers who do not have access to a compliant institutional or discipline-specific repository.

The Repositories Support Project has developed a briefing paper to support the UK repository community in implementing the OpenAIRE guidance. It summarises the OpenAIRE guidelines and provides technical information to enable DSpace and EPrints users to ensure their repositories are compliant. The RSP has also developed an add-on for EPrints which has been tested by the community. For DSpace, the RSP points to general guidance produced by FECYT in Spain and an add-on developed by the Portuguese RCAAP projects.

The briefing paper is available here http://www.rsp.ac.uk/help/publications/#briefing-papers

A mixture of presentations and workshops allowed delegates to hear about new projects and developments relevant to repositories. The opportunity to discuss issues with colleagues was welcomed by those attending and there were plenty of opportunities for networking. The superb hospitality of the hotel with its comfort and lovely setting ensured delegates could really focus on getting the most from the school.

The programme and slides for this event can be found in our events archive.

For more information on the event see our post on the RSP Blog.

Entitled Open Access: the impact for libraries and librarians, this busy event saw over eighty delegates being addressed by a diverse range of speakers from the open access community, repository managers and administrators and representatives from publishers and funding bodies.

Feedback so far indicates that the event has been very well received.

The speakers' presentations can be downloaded from the event page and Valérie Spezi has written a full report on the event on the University of Leicester library blog.

The new design includs a complete restructuring and streamlining of the content to focus on the essential information for repository managers and administrators and to highlight the RSP's busy events programme.

The presentation will focus on developments in the United Kingdom higher education sector and will include the following:

The background of repository managers and teams – where are they coming from?

The skills required to make institutional repositories a success. Traditionally, metadata has been seen as a key element of repositories and therefore the library and information community has been the obvious place to source staff. However, it has become clear that broader skills such as advocacy to encourage academics to deposit their work and project management are critical skill requirements. Also, information professionals need to keep ahead of new technological developments.

Emerging professional networks - the United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories.

The role of support services in helping to develop information professionals in their role. This includes the Repositories Support Project (RSP), the Welsh Repository Network (WRN) and the Enhancing Repository Infrastructure in Scotland (ERIS) Project.

The comparative chart of the results of the survey can be found on the RSP web site and you can read more about the survey on the RSP blog.

For more information, contact support@rsp.ac.uk

Page editor: Jackie Wickham

Jackie Wickham from the RSP presented on Open Access to Research in the United Kingdom at the International Conference on IT Enhanced Organic, Agro-Ecological and Environmental Education on 17th September. This was a packed two day event attended by over 200 delegates from 25 countries. The slides and more information can be found at the RSP Blog.

This lively workshop was attended by a mixture of repository software developers, technicians and repository managers. They heard about case studies from API users, and about forthcoming changes to the RoMEO service and the impact that these will have on the API. During breakout sessions, they were able to provide useful input on how the API could be used and developed in future.

Slides and notes from the workshop, including an initial API Wish List drawn from delegates and a survey of API users can be found on the Workshop's web page.

A description of the workshop and Repository Fringe as a whole can be found on the RSP Blog.

You are invited to register for the free RSP one day conference “Doing it differently”. This is a unique opportunity to hear a wide range of speakers who will present insights into developments in the repository world and alternative ways of creating repositories.
The programme includes a speaker from Mendeley who will talk about their services for academics and their current project work on direct document deposit from Mendeley into institutional repositories. Other topics include Web 2.0 tools and features, RSS and iTunes, and handling non-print media.

Further details and booking forms