Group-based Repositories in Oz Diane Costello Council of Australian University Librarians ICOLC Montreal 2007
Group-based repositories Not shared infrastructure, except for metadata Collaborative, complementary development projects CAUL members & the National Library Government start-up funding ADT APSR ARROW
ADT (Australasian Digital Theses Program) project, government-funded, 7 universities led by UNSW Adapted VT software to Australian conditions Central metadata repository, distributed institutional repositories Very limited set of compulsory metadata based on Dublin Core, compulsory front page format Repository software not compulsory, but VT initially on its own
ADT (2) Open to other participants in 2000 (now 39 active) Ownership by all CAUL from 2003 Joined by CONZUL in 2006 Redeveloped in 2004 to add metadata for non-digital theses, and upgrade standards Moving away from VT to e-prints, dSpace, Fedora, ProQuest, etc Currently 39 active members, 140,000 records Keep it simple …..
APSR (Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories) A Partnership of 5 institutions to Promote Excellence in Managing Digital Collections Funded by DEST from 2004 Strategic Objectives Augment interoperability & integration Provide infrastructure and services for digital collections Facilitate eResearch (cyberinfrastructure) Enable research reporting for funding and accountability
APSR (2) Repository systems – all open source Australian National University – DSpace University of Sydney – DSpace University of Queensland – Fez+Fedora (Fez developed in-house by UQ and now in use by National Science Digital Library and Emory University)
APSR (3) Principles of collaboration Interoperable: must use common interfaces, protocols and standards Platform-Independent: must work with DSpace and Fez-Fedora Reusable: must be documented and ‘packaged’ for download/distribution
APSR (4) Repository interoperability & integration projects (RIFF) repository integration with common research tools – e.g. Open Office, Open Journals, Open Conference standard repository content models and presentation definitions for improving dissemination and presentation an APSR repository interchange profile – for improving migration between repositories and integration with other systems used in the university for administration and research defining standard software interfaces for repositories in association with work going on internationally.
APSR (5) Collections Services and Infrastructures (COSI) Collections Service Registry Format Notification and Obsolescence Service Benchmark Statistics Service Repository Technical Support Service Publications Discussion papers Publications on sustainability and repository issues What software should I choose? Need to set up a repository? Read some of the comparative reports. Discussion papers What software should I choose?
ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) Objective – identify and test software or solutions to support best practice institutional digital repositories comprising e-prints, electronic theses, e-research and electronic publishing. Funded by DEST from 2004 Working repository solution built on top of, & extending functionality of, Fedora by VTLS (VITAL) Complemented by ARROW Discovery Service harvesting from institutional repositories
ARROW (2) A generalised institutional repository solution for research information management Not about Open Access – although that is possible too Initial focus on managing and exposing traditional “print equivalent” research outputs Expanded to managing other digital research outputs Design decisions accommodate management of other digital objects such as learning objects and research inputs such as large data sets DEST Research reporting and audit, and Research Quality Framework likely to drive deposit of content by academics and research managers in ARROW universities Employing Open Standards where possible
ARROW (3) 2007 work plan Creative development of institutional repositories, to further enhance the functionality and utility of repositories. Supporting 16 ARROW Community members in the implementation of the Research Quality Framework Supporting Australian engagement with institutional repositories, through the assistance and support of the ARROW Community and other outreach programs. Building partnerships with related projects and organisations both in Australia and overseas, to further enhance repositories Persistent Identifiers and Linking INfrastructure (PILIN) – a sub-project of ARROW which is investigating how a national infrastructure for the creation of persistent identifiers might be brought about.