OR09: Institutional Repositories: Contributing to Institutional Knowledge Management and the Global Research Commons

Day 1, session 2b.

Institutional Repositories: Contributing to Institutional Knowledge Management and the Global Research Commons - Wendy White (University of Southampton)

Insightful, passionate kick-ass presentation, with some excellent diagrams in the slides (alas I found no link yet), especially one that puts the repository in the middle of the scientific workflow. The message was clear: tough times ahead for repositories – we have to be an active part of the flow, otherwise we may not survive.

Current improvements (see slides: linking into HR instead of LDAP to follow history of deployment, lightbox for presentation of nontext material) are strategy-driven, which is a step forward from tech-driven, but still piecemeal.

Predicts grants for large scale collaboration processes could be tipping point for changing lone researcher paradigm.

(in my opinion, this may well be true for some fields, even in the humanities, but not for all. Interesting that for instance The Fascinator Desktop aim to serve those ‘loners’).

Stress that Open access is not just idealism, it can also benefit in highly competitive fields – cites a research group that got a contract because the company contacted them after they could see what their researchers where doing.

“build on success stories: symbols and mythology”.
“Repository managers have fingers in lots of pies, we are in a very good position to take on the key bridging role.”
It will however require a culture change, also in the management sphere. In the Q&A she noted that Southhampton is lucky to have been through that process already.

All in all, a good strategic longer term overview, and quite urgent.