1. Institutional repositories and records management: overlaps, obstacles & opportunities
Jackie Knowles
Repository Support Officer
Steve Bailey
Senior Advisor, JISC infoNet

2. Contents/Intro What is a repository? The repository scene
The JISC perspective
Institutional repositories
Stakeholders
Benefits
Typical content
Functionality
Key issues
The future

3. What is a repository?
At root they are mechanism for managing and storing digital content.
But should be considered more as a set of services which are offered to the academic community.
Repositories can be institutional or subject based.

4. Repositories worldwide
Verbally give figures:
951 repositories worldwide (figures vary slightly between statistical services because of how repositories are defined)

5. Repository growth over time
Included to illustrate that this is a recent development – all very new and cutting edge.

6. Distribution by country
Point out UK proportion – UK is showing strong leadership when it comes to repositories. We only represent about 1 % of the worlds population.

7. Repositories in the UK Verbally give figures:
106 repositories in the UK, 2 in Wales, Glamorgan/RWCMD coming on stream as we speak

8. JISC investment in repositories
JISC have a repositories and preservation programme through which they are making a £14m investment in Higher Education repository and digital content infrastructure.
Heery, R. and Powell, A. (2006) Digital Repositories Roadmap: Looking Forward Accessed 3rd December 2007.

9. JISC investment in repositories
Main initiatives
cross-searching facilities across repositories
funding for institutions to develop a critical mass of content
preservation solutions
advice for the development of repositories.
Funding lots of projects and research.

10. The RSP High level representation Funding councils / publishers etc
High-level advocacy
Presentations / materials aimed at senior managers
Repository
establishment
Technical Support
DSpace &
ePrints
Encourage use
Presentations / materials for researchers / teachers
Grassroots advocacy
Presentations / materials for researchers / teachers
Encourage re-use
Presentations / materials for service providers
More repositories, more content, more use of content and more re-use of content.
Repository Administrators Support to run repositories (e.g. preservation)

11. The RSP co-ordinate and deliver good practice
provide guidance and advice
Activities
Outreach programme
On-site support
Enquiry service
Web site
Briefing papers

12. So back to Institutional repositories
Institutional repositories are concerned with intellectual output …
Collecting
Preserving
Managing
Accessibility
Re-use
Based on open standards
Mention *** IR store content and a metadata record for each item contained within.

13. Main repository features
Submission forms
User area
Licences & terms and conditions
Metadata records
Full text of items (optional)
Search and browse functionality

14. Quick demo
Cadair -

15. Demo

16. Harvesting
Most traffic coming to an IR comes via Google and other search engines.
Harvesting and exposure of information to the wider world is a key element.
So cannot talk for very long about repositories before mentioning Open Access …

17. Open Access Traditional research publishing Open access
Publically funded but readership limited by economies.
Authors signing away rights.
Publisher monopolies.
Open access
Encourages a wider use of information assets and increases citations.
Makes information freely accessible to anyone in the world using an internet connection.
Potential readership is far, far greater than that for articles where the full-text is restricted to subscribers.
Explain this is where IRs come from but that additional drivers for creating them are now appearing, as subsequent slides will illustrate

18. Key stakeholders in a repository
Senior management
Academics as authors
Academics as users
Repository staff
Library, IT and other support staff
Publishers
Funding agencies
General public
Explain we will concentrate on the two key stakeholder groups in bold for this session.

19. Benefits to institutions
Management
Marketing showcase
Collection stewardship
Consistency of data collected
Economies of scale
Preservation
Management information tool
RAE
QAA audit
Competitor analysis tool

20. Benefits to authors Academic authors Visibility Impact Recognition
Usage feedback
Discussion
Collaboration
Career development

21. Typical repository content
Preprints
Postprints
Datasets
Learning objects
Videos
Sound files
Images
Theses
Dissertations
Royalty publications
Conference papers
Technical reports
Grey literature
Administrative documents

22. Types of content in UK repositories
Research often a key driver for setting up repositories – UK research of significant economic importance, figures from the OECD show the UK has :
9% of worlds scientific publications
12% of citations
But only 1% of the population
But other content types are significant – e-theses, teaching and learning.

23. Administrative documents
Main focus of repository development to date has been on research outputs and theses
Although JISC funding has gone towards some records management specific projects
Kings College London
University of Plymouth Repository
Others?

24. A note about preservation
The accessibility agenda is more prominent in the repository community - at the moment.
… someone else will deal with it!
National solutions?
Preservation policies are encouraged

25. What are the issues? For senior managers: Resources Awareness
Culture change
Policy framework
Mandates

26. What are the issues? For academic authors: Awareness
Rights (confusion and misinformation)
Time
Complexity of metadata required
Final versions of their papers
Difficulty
Apathy

27. What are the issues? For repository staff: Awareness
Defining a metadata schema
Defining workflows and the level of mediation needed for submission
Managing copyright and intellectual property rights
Advocacy

28. Challenges for the sector
Lots of material we could collect
Lots of different stakeholders
Institutions often have multi-centred power hubs
To mandate or not to mandate
Defining success …. the numbers game!

29. Top UK repositories Cambridge (189,216) Southampton (27,328)
Open University (5,986)
UK average about 300
Aberystwyth (274 items)
Cambridge skews the average proper but they’ve had lots of money and done lots of things with images etc – so the average given here is the median value, more indicative of average content.

30. Challenges for the sector
The cultural challenge is uppermost in people’s minds
Embedding this in the academic or institutional workflow
But … technology is moving forward
Web 2.0

31. Organisation Resources
The balancing act
Technology
Organisation Resources

32. The future Lots of best practice and case studies out there
Tools are available, for example
Romeo & Juliet
OpenDoar Policies Tool
Repository community now being established
JISC is making a significant investment in this area
Help and support mechanisms emerging, such as the RSP!

33. Repositories at your institutions
Handout

34. Over to Steve…

35. Background (a personal perspective)
C.2003 ‘Sudden’ and ‘rapid’ rise in profile of the repository agenda within JISC
A watching brief maintained + formal/informal discussions with those responsible
Always with a series of questions in mind:
What is the overlap with RM, now & in the future?
Are we trying to achieve the same things?
Is it a threat, opportunity or irrelevance to RM?
To what extent do repositories need RM & how do we prevent them re-inventing the wheel?

36. Findings There are fundamental differences:
Drivers (open access etc)
Reflected in technical priorities (inter-operability not retention mgt for example)
Standards
Practitioner community
User community?
Content?
But there is also much in common…

37. Similarities Both: relate to the management of information
are primarily concerned with internal information
require a combination of technology, policies, procedures & user behaviour
rely on the participation & engagement of the user
involve resource discovery
impose centrally-determined controls around the behaviour of information
May require access to digital content in the medium-long term

38. Regardless of their content…
Key RM questions & concerns which may (should?) be of interest to the IR community
Regardless of their content…

39. Controlling the content
How is the content of an IR defined & by whom?
When in its lifecycle is content deemed appropriate for inclusion?
E.g. drafts or final content
Who is able to add content?

40. Regulating retention
Who defines how long the contents should be retained?
Based on what criteria?
Is this consistent with the corporate retention schedule?
Is the deletion process controlled, complete and auditable?

41. Preserving the provenance
How is the link preserved between the content and the process which created it?
How is the link preserved between content in the repository & related content held elsewhere?
How is the provenance of who created the content, when, why & how captured?

42. Other RM considerations
Where is the metadata sourced from?
Free text?
Internal pick list?
Shared, verifiable external resource?
Protecting the evidential value
Ensuring qualities of authenticity, integrity & non-repudiation
Preservation planning
Appropriate choice of format, media, strategy etc
Appraisal: identifying what is worth preserving

43. Possible areas of overlap (competition?)
IR ‘scope creep’ into capturing business records
Project proposals, grant applications, financial reporting…
Institutional Repository vs EDRMS
Should this content be in / managed by your EDRMS?
Or will they be two separate stove-pipes
IR’s may beat RM for resources
More directly relevant to core institutional activity
Direct backing from important stakeholders (RC/FCs)
Heavy backing from JISC & others
Build a national infrastructure of interoperable digital repositories (addressing  institutional, subject and learning object repositories)

44. Summary
Work on institutional repositories is, or will be, happening within your institution
They may need your help
We may well have the answers to some of their problems
There may be issues regarding respective scopes & remits to be resolved…and soon
There may be opportunities for records managers to increase their profile & impact

45. Questions, comment, discussion & next steps…

46. Jackie Knowles