As I mentioned in my presentation to library managers last week, it’s turning out to be a nice example of how new web applications can be spun up quickly at Lincoln using our existing [open and non-open] data sources (in this case, HR staff data, BuddyPress social profile data, Repository feeds, Gravatar images, and our OAuth authentication framework/Common Web Design), plus a bit of developer magic.

You can search our staff profile directory (still in development) at: http://phone.online.lincoln.ac.uk/

There is a growing tendency for universities in all groupings—certainly for the research-intensive universities—to publish the entirety of an author’s publications to their web profile as embedded content from their repository and/or Current Research Information System (CRIS). Here are a few examples of staff profiles on other UK universities’ sites which incorporate publication lists derived from their repositories or CRISes:

• University of Brighton (non-inscrits) [scroll down to 'Recent Publications']
• University of Bristol (Russell Group)
• University of East Anglia (1994 group) [click on the 'Publications' tab]
• University of Edinburgh (Russell Group)
• University of Glasgow (Russell Group) [click on the 'Publications' tab]
• University of Huddersfield (University Alliance) [click on 'Publications and Other Research Outputs']
• Imperial College London (Russell Group)
• University of Kent (non-inscrits) [click on 'Publications']
• Kingston University (Million+) [scroll down the page]
• London School of Economics (Russell Group)
• University of Northampton (Million+) [click on 'Publications', then 'View NECTAR records']
• Open University (University Alliance)
• Queen’s University Belfast (Russell Group)
• University of Reading (1994 group) [scroll down the page]
• University of Southampton (Russell Group) [click on the 'Publications' tab]

We’re pulling the publication details from the Lincoln Repository for each author into their web profile (example), using a search on their University of Lincoln staff ID (which forms part of their standard HR data profile) – e.g. http://lncn.eu/ep/000157. We can then get at the Repository data in almost any format we want (BibTeX, JSON, XML, RSS, etc.). I’m also keeping a close eye on the development of the EPrints Shelves plugin, which might be an interesting tool for giving authors more flexibility and control over how their Repository publication list(s) are displayed on their web profile.

My original website was a series of plain HTML documents; now instead of maintaining my own installation of WordPress I’m using the University of Lincoln’s (i.e. my employer’s) WordPress MU / BuddyPress server at blogs.lincoln.ac.uk, but mapped to my own domain. This way I can participate in the social-networking features of BuddyPress, while still maintaining my own, personal online presence outside the University.