ICTD departmental meeting presentation on repository development

Repository and RDM update

Chris Awre

Head of Information Management, Library and Learning Innovation

ICTD Departmental Meeting, 17th April 2013

To cover

• Repository recap

• Current repository activity

• Research Data Management

• Q&A

ICTD departmental meeting | 17 April 2013 | 2

Digital Repositories

A digital repository is a technology that enables the storage, management and preservation of structured digital content, and access to it

PreservationAccess

Management and maintenance

Digitalrepositories


Digital repository drivers

• Digital repositories emerged in response to the need to better manage, share and preserve the digital content being generated

• Universities have been at the forefront because so much of what they produce – research, teaching – is the generation of knowledge that we need to keep a record of and share– Institutional record of authority

• Subject communities have also developed their own repositories (e.g., physics, economics), driven by the desire to foster communication and collaboration


Digital repository development

• OpenDOAR lists 2271 repositories worldwide– 210 in the UK

• 76.2% are institutional

• Content types started with journal articles (open access publication), but are now more widespread– Conference papers, reports/working papers, books (incl.

chapters), theses/dissertations, multimedia/AV materials, learning materials (OER), software

– Research data


Five principles

A repository should be content agnostic

A repository should be (open) standards-based

A repository should be scalable

A repository should understand how pieces of content relate to each other

A repository should be manageable with limited resource


Five principles (leading to our implementation)

Fedora is content agnostic

Fedora is (open) standards-based

Fedora is scalable

Fedora understands how pieces of content relate to each other

Fedora is manageable with limited resource– With help from the community


Fedora and Hydra


Storage (e.g., SAN, Cloud)

Fedora

Hydra

Hydra provides user interfaces and workflowsover the repositoryConcept of multiple Hydra ‘heads’ over singlebody of content

Fedora is the digital repository system, holdingthe content in a highly structured way

The content is stored either locally or in theCloud (currently a slice of the SAN)

Hydra


Four Key Capabilities

1. Support for any kind of record or metadata

2. Object-specific behaviors for workflow and discovery– Books, Articles, Images, Music, Video, Manuscripts, etc.

3. Tailored views for user or discipline-specific materials

4. Easy to augment & over-ride with local modifications


A vision

“I believe that a mature and fully realized institutional repository will contain works of faculty and students – both research and teaching materials – and also documentation of the activities of the institution itself in the form of records of events and performance and of the ongoing intellectual life of the institution. It will also house experimental and observational data captured by members of the institution that support their scholarly activities.”

Cliff Lynch“Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age”

ARL, no. 226 (February 2003): 1-7.http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml


A vision (as interpreted by Hull)

“I believe that a mature and fully realized institutional repository will contain works of faculty and students – both research and teaching materials – and also documentation of the activities of the institution itself in the form of records of events and performance and of the ongoing intellectual life of the institution. It will also house experimental and observational data captured by members of the institution that support their scholarly activities.”

Cliff Lynch“Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age”

ARL, no. 226 (February 2003): 1-7.http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml


Work of faculty and students

Faculty

- Disseminate research outputs

- Manage research data

- Learning material resource

Students

- Disseminate theses / dissertations

- Provide exam papers

- Student handbook archive

Granular security required to manage these different activities

The repository has been tied into our CAS system

Materials can be open, internal, or restricted to user groups / users

All material is quality assured by Content & Access Team in LLI before publication


Records of events and performance

Creative writing – discussions with authors

Inaugural (and other?) lectures

University Annual Learning & Teaching Conference

Campus-based e-publishing

Integration with Open Journal Systems to enable archiving of publications


Experimental and observational data

• Tiptoeing into research data management (RDM)

• JISC History DMP project– Identified ways to encourage and facilitate the planning of data

management

• EPSRC roadmap– Highlighting ways forward to make the most of the data we

produce


Starting points for RDM

• Management of research data happens– Existing activity is acknowledged

• Current research data management (RDM) initiatives are based on three main trends– The amount of data is growing (the data deluge)– Data management is required more, across multiple disciplines– Increasing perception of the value of data– …and a fourth – demonstrating return on investment


RDM @ Hull: Why?

• In many cases current practice may be sufficient

• But…– Funder requirements may not always be feasible to implement

at the project level– Institution level services and support can help meet

requirements and save the cost of repeating activity across multiple projects

– National and international data centres may also be appropriate for use

• Data management is not just storing the data securely– Building the value of the data through active, local management


RDM @ Hull: What?

This, and other, events

EPSRC roadmap

University Research DataManagement Working Group

Assessing current practice

Research data management

websiteEngagement in

research bid process

Data management

planningHydra repository Research Data Storage


RDM @ Hull: Who?

• Research data management support is not the sole responsibility of any current support service – nor should it be– But we can all work together to create the whole picture of support

• Units involved, currently and potentially:– Library and Learning Innovation– Research Funding Office– ICTD– Knowledge Exchange– Faculty/Departmental admin– Others?

• How can we complete the jigsaw?


Context, context, context…

Research outputs

Digital archives Multimedia

Learning materials

Research data

Research data managementdoes not sit in isolation

It is one type ofdigital content

It is one type ofcontent workflow

There may be similar processes we can adaptThere may be joint developments that serve more than one need


Onward…

• Upgrade to Hydra 6– Hydra 6 will ensure we can more easily add new features and take

advantage of functionality from other Hydra partners• As well as share what we do with others

• Image management– Increasing number of use cases for image collection management

• Digital archives management– Using Hydra to implement a model for the management of born-digital

archives• Library search integration– Embedding repository collections alongside the catalogue and article

searches


Thank you

[email protected]

http://hydra.hull.ac.uk

http://projecthydra.org

http://libguides.hull.ac.uk/researchdata

Education

ICTD departmental meeting presentation on repository development