Increasing the full-text deposits in your institutional repository

The Repositories Support Project (RSP) Increasing the full-text deposits in your institutional repository event took place on Wednesday 12th June at Charing Cross Hotel. The elegant venue gave the event a relaxing atmosphere, with incredibly helpful hotel staff; beautiful chandeliers; quiet classical music playing in areas; and candle-lit corridors in the evening. The delegates were mostly from a wide range of UK Higher Education institutions. A delicious lunch with a variety of choices was served in the Hotel’s Brasserie; this gave delegates the valuable opportunity to chat to one another, share ideas and issues about their institutional repositories, and to discuss the ways they were attempting to increase full-text deposits.

There were seven excellent presentations in total that focused on: implementation of self-archiving in institutional repositories, deposit tools, and depositing workflow. Balviar Notay spoke about JISC’s focus on deposit projects. The key-note speaker was Les Carr, his presentation on full-text deposits in the current scholarly communications environment was very enthusiastic, entertaining and thought-provoking. Muriel Mewissen discussed RJ Broker, Steve Hitchcock’s presentation was on DepositMOre. John Norman’s presentation included a video showing how DURA works in practice. Richard Jones spoke about Sword, and Bo Middleton’s presentation covered RePOSIT.

The day culminated in a lively ‘break-out’ session where delegates worked in groups to discuss: “What strategies are followed currently in your institution to increase deposits: technical, organizational and policy issues” – each group fed their responses back to the room, and these in general seemed to demonstrate common problems experienced by many repository managers, and therefore the solutions suggested could be usefully applied to many too, making this a worthwhile event.

You can download all presentations and notes from the break-out sessions here. Delegates tweeted throughout the day and all twitter feeds are collected in storify. Overall, this was a useful informative day; delegates gave positive feedback praising both the event speakers and the event organizers.

Implementing Open Access Funders’ Policies

The Repositories Support Project (RSP) ‘Implementing Open Access Funders’ Policies’ event was held at Goodenough College, London, on the 23^rd May. The striking venue of “The Great Hall” resembled ‘The Great Hall’ at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, minus the Sorting Hat and Dumbledore (lots of wooden floors, tables, and portraits on the walls); instead it was filled with delegates who were in the main, from a diverse range of UK HEIs. At the refreshment breaks and lunch-time, delegates made the most of the chance to chat with one another to share thoughts about the presentations, make useful contacts, and exchange information about how they would implement the policies and ideas from the RSP event at their institutions.