Successful Site Visit

Institution: Swansea Metropolitan University
Date: 18th September 2009
Subject: Site Visit

On Friday 18th September the WRN team conducted a successful site visit at Swansea Metropolitan University. At the invitation of Anne Harvey, Head of Library and Learning Services, Antony and I met with members of the institution’s Repository Working Group along with other Senior Academics, and delivered a presentation introducing the work of the WRN and the benefits of submitting to and using a repository. This presentation facilitated discussion with those present as to some of the organisational, cultural and professional issues associated with managing, populating and embedding repositories within the processes of the institution. Feedback from those academics present was positive and the position and development of the repository will be taken forward and discussed within future committees.


Anne Harvey, Head of Library and Learning Services, Swansea Metropolitan University
Hannah Payne, Repository Support Officer, WRN

Following a tasty buffet lunch, Antony and I then demonstrated the workflow submission process within DSpace, highlighting the methods for administering workflow steps and managing workflow permissions. Antony then met with members of the University’s technical team to talk through some of the particulars of Swansea Met’s repository installation; whilst I explored collection policy ideas in relation to the Welsh E-theses Harvesting Service and Mediated Deposit Bureau workpackages with Anne and Dr. David Ashelby, Dean of Academic Affairs. Help was also given with the completion of the e-thesis questionnaire.


If anyone wants any further information about these site visit elements, or would be interested in the delivery of any similar training within their own institution, please don’t hesitate to contact the WRN Team at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk.

italianisims

I recieved my first order FROM italy today!

It felt amazing to know that the news are being spread- INTERNATIONALLY!

Its the first time I deal with anything from the sort but quite exciting. HONESTLY, I had no idea it would be so complicated. Thank GOD I had a very patient and collaborative customer who helped me figure things out.

So, on ETSY you have several payment options of which the most common are PAYPAL, and OTHER. Pay Pal is confusing, its supposed to allow you to pay online with credit cards even if you do not have a PAYPAL account, but none of my previous customers have been able to do it so I've had them send me a personal money order. THING IS that in ITALY things work differently ( and I say this with attitude)!

I had to create a"POSTE PAY" account AT THE ITALIAN post offices so that i have a re-chargeable card in which anyone(in ITALY ) can deposit money and i can use it just like an atm(debit card)=convenient... NOW WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF EUROPE?

ja... one day hopefully!

WELL... i packed the magical ITEMS- and off they went to PESCARA. 3 EARRINGS: cuorincincini, fiorincincina, and juana pepa...

I cannot believe shipping a small package within Italy is so expensive- I MEAN- it STARTS at €6,00! what is good though is that for about one euro more- you can make it NEXT DAY!!!!YAAYYYYAYY!!!

she was HAPPY and s was I... to my surprise- I GOT A SECOND ORDER!

huggs to all... expect more

News Round-up

Two interesting pieces of news from repository land this week ...

Enabling Open Scholarship



EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS) is a new organisation for universities and research institutions worldwide. It is acting as both an information service and a forum for raising and discussing issues around the mission of modern universities and research institutions, particularly with regard to the creation, dissemination and preservation of research findings. Of particular note is the fact that EOS is primarily aimed at senior institutional managers who have an interest in, and wish to help develop thinking on, strategies for promoting open scholarship to the academy as a whole and to society at large.

Repositories are mentioned widely on the site and we would encourage all our parnters to explore this new resource and promote it within their own institution.


Open Access Week & RSP Deposit Competition



To coincide with Open Access Week (19th-23rd October 2009) the Repositories Support Project (RSP) is launching a competition! The UK institution with the greatest number of fulltext, open access items deposited in its repository during open access week wins an RSP iPod!

With our next WRN statistical census date fast approaching (1st Oct), our attention will be drawn to the progress (or otherwise!) with getting full text content into our own Welsh repositories. Perhaps we should all enter into the competitve spirit and use Open Access Week as an opportunity to encourage academics to deposit more content?

JISC Cross Project Forum: 8th September, 2009

On Tuesday 8th September, Antony and I represented the WRN at a JISC organised Cross Project Forum. Also in attendance were representatives of the RSP, UKCoRR, ERIS (Enhancing Repository Infrastructure in Scotland) and UKOLN. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together similarly focussed repository projects and groups to consider and discuss repository development and support across the UK. It was hoped that the forum could be held at regular intervals over the next 18 months and that over this time those within the forum could collaborate with each other in order to meet the individual aims and objectives of each group.

Points of interest from the meeting in regards to the WRN and its partners included:

• Dominic Tate, RSP Project Co-ordinator, relayed to the group that the focus of the new phase RSP was looking to continue its support of Repository Managers within England and Wales; with the continued focus of encouraging more content within HE repositories. The RSP hoped to deliver ‘campaigns’ on certain repository topics, entailing high level events; training; and support materials.
  

• ERIS, represented by Project Manager, James Toon, is looking to work with both Repository Managers and Researchers within Scottish HEIs to create tools and solutions to encourage engagement and content within Scottish IRs. A special focus is on the work of cross-institutional research pools and the curation of any data produced. ERIS will build upon the work of the previous IRIScotland project. This project established two pilot services: a cross repository harvesting service to aggregate research outputs; and a hosting service based at the National Library of Scotland for those without repositories. These services are of particular interest to the WRN in light of our proposed e-theses harvesting work package. The previous project also produced a draft metadata policy between partners which may be useful to inform our Mediated Deposit Bureau.
  

• The possibility of special interest/ software user groups within the bigger UKCoRR structure was suggested by Mary Robinson, UKCoRR Secretary. The IRIScotland and WRN groups already create forums for the included Repository Managers/ Staff and possible ways for those groups as a whole to be represented within UKCoRR were considered such as the creation of group ‘reps.’
  

Other interesting points discussed included:

• The creation of academic profiles to identify the types of ‘academic’ that are out there and their views on OA publishing along with their potential relationship with a repository. Suggestions for advocacy and engagement strategies for each type will also be produced.
  

• The creation of a ‘How to’ advocacy pack including model answers to academics’ repository FAQs.

• The use of Twitter to raise awareness of individual repositories. A suggestion was to have repository staff appear as personal members but to use it as a professional site; making tweets about repository achievements and developments. Rather than having a repository account automatically tweeting when particular items were deposited. A repository RSS/Atom news feed maybe better suited for this purpose.
  

• Development of a technical awareness list for JISC projects so results of past projects within one technical area are grouped together and easily searchable so developed software is not lost.
  

• Forthcoming publication of a JISC study on Repository and OPAC links. James highlighted that work has been carried out at the National Library of Scotland connecting their repository with a Voyager OPAC, an area of interest for many of the Welsh HEIs.
  

See the UKCoRR blog for another post about this meeting and other posts regarding repository issues and UKCoRR.