Repositories Research Team Newsletter
(June 2007)

The newsletter about digital repositories research.

In this issue

About RRT Newsletter

The purpose of this newsletter is to provide specialised information to all those interested in Digital Repositories Research.

This special issue is packed with useful information about the various activities the JISC Repositories Research Team have been and are involved in the area of Digital Repositories.

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Contact RRT

e-mail:
rrt@ukoln.ac.uk

wiki:
www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/

Welcome to our newsletter!

The purpose of this newsletter is to provide specialised information to all those interested in Digital Repositories Research.
This special issue is packed with useful information about the various activities the JISC Repositories Research Team have been and are involved in the area of Digital Repositories.

Who are the Repositories Research Team and what do they do?

The Repositories Research Team is a collaboration between UKOLN and JISC CETIS. UKOLN have worked previously on repositories in a number of contexts including ePrints UK, the Open Archives Forum and Delos, and JISC CETIS (the JISC Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards) has considerable experience in supporting the development of digital repositories for e-learning.

To contact us, you can either visit our wiki:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/

DigiRep is a central tool for facilitating communication, discussion and collaboration between the support team and projects.
Repositories Programme project staff have been given editing rights within DigiRep, although its contents are freely visible to anyone.

or e-mail us:
rrt@ukoln.ac.uk

The remit for the work of the research team is quite wide and includes:

Helping projects find and exploit synergies across the programme and beyond
Gathering scenarios and use cases from projects
Liaising with other national and international repositories activities, including liaison with the e-Framework
Synthesising project and programme outcomes
Engaging with interoperability standards activity and repository architectures

JISC's Repository-related programmes

JISC Digital Repositories Programme

The original JISC Digital Repositories Programme which started in 2005 and finishes at the end of this year 2007 is exploring how the user interacts with the emerging network of relatively small (at this stage) content collections.
The programme also examines the interoperability between repository platforms and other services as well as on consistent identification of objects within the repositories.

Further information:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital_repositories.aspx

Capital programme: Repositories and Preservation strand

The new Repositories and Preservation programme which has built on some of the work of the Digital Repositories Programme. The programme is a 14m investment in Higher Education repository and digital content infrastructure.
It will fund initiatives to develop the Information Environment supporting digital repositories and preservation, including cross-searching facilities across repositories; funding for institutions to develop a critical mass of content, preservation solutions and advice for the development of repositories.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_rep_pres.aspx

You are not alone!

RRT has set up a mailing list so that you can discuss issues relating to Digital Repositories with almost 900 members (and counting!) from all over the world and from varied organisations.

This active mailing list has already seen some lively and thought-provoking debate.

To join the JISC-REPOSITORIES e-mail list, please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/JISC-REPOSITORIES.html

Deposit API and SWORD

SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) will take forward the Deposit protocol developed by a small working group lead by RRT implementing it as a lightweight web-service in four major repository software platforms: EPrints, DSpace, Fedora and IntraLibrary.
Community acceptance and take-up will be sought through dissemination activities.
The project is led by UKOLN, University of Bath, with partners at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the University of Southampt on and Intrallect Ltd.
The project aims to improve the efficiency and quality of repository deposit and to diversity and expedite the options for timely population of repositories with content whilst promoting a common deposit interface and supporting the Information Environment principles of interoperability.

Further Information:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWORD

A Repository Ecology

The repository ecology is work which is taking place within the Repositories Research Team to provide a clearer articulation of the way repositories are evolving and the interactions that are taking place between them.

For more information see:

The repository ecology: an approach to understanding repository and service interactions
5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication CERN, Geneva, Switzerland 18th - 20th April 2007
http://indico.cern.ch/materialDisplay.py?contribId=11&sessionId=10&materialId=slides&confId=5710

Repository ecology: EThOS, the new UK e-theses service, national and institutional repository interaction
The JISC Conference 2007, Birmingham
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/events/2007/03/ethos.ppt

Dublin Core Application Profile for Scholarly Works

UKOLN and the Eduserv Foundation have recently collaborated on a Dublin Core Application Profile, funded by JISC, to describe scholarly works (or 'eprints'). This Profile tackles quality and consistency issues inherent in using Simple DC.
The work, co-ordinated by UKOLN and the Eduserv Foundation, applies FRBR as the basis of an application model for scholarly works. The Profile also uses the DCMI Abstract Model to group descriptions of multiple entities and their relationships.
As part of their community engagement plan, several presentations, special sessions have been run at the Dublin Core 2006 conference in Manzarillo, Mexico in October 2006 and Open Scholarship 2006 in Glasgow, with significant European interest being shown.
Further discussions with developers, repositories and aggregator services are taking community acceptance even further.

Further Information:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile

Relevant up and coming events

Digital Repositories: Dealing with the Digital Deluge
June 5 and 6 2007
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2007/06/repositories_conference.aspx

Innovating e-learning online conference
11 June 2007
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning_pedagogy/elp_conference07.aspx

JCDL
18-23 June 2007
http://www.jcdl2007.org/

Dublin Core and Metadata Applications
27-31 August 2007
http://www.dc2007.sg/

ALT C Beyond Control
4 September 2007
http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/

ECDL 2007
16-21 September 2007
http://www.ecdl2007.org/index.php

Repositories Research Team Newsletter (June 2007)