The entire e-resources and repository team went en masse to the latest Repositories Support Project event, “Doing it differently“, which was held in Sheffield Cathedral on the 27th of October 2010: “to hear about alternative approaches to repository-like functions, open access and the general field of improving research communications“.
Some quick points from the notes I took on the day:
- [I think it was] Stephanie Taylor of UKOLN [who] made a good point in her presentation about the ‘forgotten’ people in libraries, who ought naturally to be interested in the content held in repositories, but who are rarely included in discussions: inter-library loans staff being an obvious example, with the repo. as source of material to reduce the burden on document supply.
- Our own repository was mentioned in Richard Davis (ULCC)’s examples of SNEEP plugins used ‘in the wild’ – it’s good to think that some of the features of the Lincoln Repository (crafted over in the LIROLEM project that gave it its genesis) are still worthy of being held up as examples.
- Stephanie Meece’s demo of the University of the Arts’ repository was enlightening; it gave considered and coherent explanation of some of the low-level culture-clash conversations that we’ve had with our own Art & Design academic staff. It was worth it, too, to hear about the Kultur Consortium and the potential there for mutual support and development of repositories capable of meeting the needs of the Arts.
- Joss Winn was also there, bringing the University of Lincoln contingent to five! Joss gave a talk on using RSS to grease the wheels of scholarly writing and publishing, which has an accompanying blog post.
- Also exciting to see the direction Mendeley is taking [slides], with the potential (in the new year) for new features (“Library Groups”) to support library e-journals admininstration and subscription analysis.
We also took the opportunity (as four of the five committee members were in the room) to conduct an informal, stand-up UKCoRR meeting over lunch, at which we laid the groundwork for the next UKCoRR AGM, which will hopefully take place toward the end of February 2011.
Slides and handouts from the day are on the RSP’s website.
