INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES What,Why and How Workshop on Institutional Repositories, February 2005, Vilnius, Lithuania Lilian van der Vaart, Eleftheria

IR – what is it? Clever system to organize and publish an institute’s output As a service to its faculty, students, other researchers, the general public Offers access, visibility, retrievability, ease and speed No IR without people without purpose without fit between people and purpose

IR – ‘system’ Cables and boxes: hardware, software, network PEOPLE Rules and regulations: policies, procedures, workflows

IR – ‘publish’ IR - Institute XIR - Institute YIR - Institute Z Archiving - datalevel Copyright management Collaboratory CVSubject portal Research reporting Teaching / DLO Web publishing, e.g. ETD ??

IR – why? Operational/tactical goals: Assist researchers in Communicating / publishing research Teaching Administrative duties (reporting, cv’s, digital archiving) Provide (better) e-learning environment for students Promote university/department for quality research/teaching Provide/improve quality information on research and educational issues to general public

IR – why? Strategic goals: Improve access to / availability of research information Scope, reach Contribute to opening up research communication and publication processes Reduce biases (Restore) responsibility & role university for research communication / publication Public accountability for publicly funded research

PolicyStrategic OrganizationalTactical TechnicalOperational -All need dealing with, no easy ways out. Experiment! -Bottom-up + top-down approach in interaction -Pitfall: wait for one or the other to be sorted out first; there is no steady-state IR – How? Diabolical interaction…

Where to start? / 1 Orientation Listen carefully to the presenters at this workshop Read the SPARC documentation Talk with others and check out other projects widely Take time to prepare yourself well - be able to articulate the features, functionality and benefits of IR So that you can discuss the idea with management / key faculty and get their support

Where to start? /2 See the checklist for practical guidelines for planning, implementation and operational phases Includes info on cost items and basic literature list In Planning, distinguish between Longer-term overall plan / general direction: “this is what we want to achieve in x years’ time” Be ambitious here Short-term, detailed, concrete action plans: “these are the steps we are taking in the next x months” Be realistic here

Pitfalls Detailed long/mid-term planning Treating it as an IT-project Over-organization Thinking others must do something first Thoughtless copying of solutions

Encouragements The future is murky, but it will clear up Questions, objections and difficulties are the fuel for your project Moderation in management, but never in fun!

Assignment for round table If there were an oracle that could answer all your questions, what question would you like it to answer?

Lilian van der Vaart Eleftheria Interim / Knowledge Management

IR – potential IR : not just a Resting place for Information but an Interesting ReSource from which Information Retrieved leads to Innovative Roads

The Virtual Research and Educational World? Datasets archives Web-based peer- reviewed journals, Conference papers Online, Research Info Online Learning Management System, VLE portal service, virtual community Institutional repositories Laboratory experiments, data creation