Institutions hate repositories... one simple reason.

Open access is not enough!

People want to give Open Access to some of their materials at their institution however the IR software is seen as a means to manage all Institutional content and not just that which is Open Access and part of the external image of the Institution.
The problem exists in the other direction as well where repository software is trying to solve these problems, thus people are not likely to use this software until it is included.

So what do we end up with...

Lots of Repository Islands which aren't interoperable with each other!

So if we solve the access and copyright issue will people use the software? errrr No. At this point the software is an all in solution and not a service which can be utilised by current institutional practise ... Give up...?

No!

Focus on providing a service, e.g. something which can manage your Digital Resources and enable this to plug to existing institutional services. Some softwares would argue they support this already. OK good, so don't try and solve the problem if it is just an integration issue.

To the repositories: Decouple! Build a set of services, build ways of plugging services together and allow the community to pic 'n' mix.

To the institution: You already have access control systems ask your Information/Computer Systems department. You probably already have a Content Management System for educational resources for students (Blackboard? - Integrates with an LDAP server), these use external services to manage access and authentication! Here's a few services for you... LDAP, Radius, Eduroam, Domain Controller.

Till next time!

#crigshow - Conference 1 - Oscelot

This open source day (#osdiii) hosted by Oscelot was an unconferene which soon became based heavily around the Blackboard platform. This was expected as the majority of people attending it were then going on to attend the BbWorld conference. With the title of the conference being Open Source and yet the main topic being that of a Closed Source product this gave an opening for the CRIG team to promote the wider Open Source community to those who are focused on Blackboard use cases.

The day was a success for the team as we promoted good practices in web development, standards, resource management and the fact that the people who manage an eLearning platform has a responsibility to the content they hold.

From our point of view, we discovered: If blackboard is the industry leader in learning management systems then the repository community is big problems when it comes to archiving these resources by the current methodologies each community practices.

More Collaboration and Awareness please!