Keynote talk by Sally Rumsey and Ben O'Steen, given at the Repository Fringe 2009, Edinburgh.

1. Repository Fringe, Edinburgh 2009
Where are
repositories going?
Ben O’Steen (ORA Software Developer)
Sally Rumsey (ORA Service & Development Manager)

2. Growth of repositories
& historical parallel

3. Sir Thomas Bodley

4. Storage
Content

5. “…and you having built an Ark
to save learning from deluge,
deserve propriety in any new
instrument or engine, whereby
learning should be improved or
advanced.”
Francis Bacon to Thomas Bodley Nov 1605
http://novels.mobi/create/out_mobi/pg/1/2/5/1/12515/12515/4.php

6. Search
function
Library
catalogue 1620
Reproduced for this presentation with kind
permission of King's College London, Foyle
Special Collections Library
www.kcl.ac.uk/.../exhibitions/marsex/mcoll.html

7. Jeffrey Keefer http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreykeefer/773540725/ CC
licence: Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

8. Radcliffe
Science
Library 1861
Radcliffe Camera 1749 New Bodleian 1940

9. Artist’s impression of new Bodleian book depository at Swindon
Details may change

10. Bodeian Stats 2009
8.5M volumes
1.6M visitors each year
65,000 registered readers*
5.4M requests for full-text journal articles
1.8M requests for e-books
* 37,000 University card holders plus 28,000 external readers

11. Library terms and conditions
Bodleian Library declaration: I hereby
undertake not to remove from the Library,
or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any
volume, document or other object
belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring
into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or
flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I
promise to obey all rules of the Library.

12. QUOD FELICITER VORTAT
ACADEMICI OXONIENS
BIBLIOTHECAM HANC
VOBIS REIPUBLICAEQUE
LITERORUM T.B.P.
That it might turn out
happily, Oxonian
academics, for you and for
the republic of lettered
men Thomas Bodley
placed this library

13. Growth in numbers of digital repositories
Source: Tim Brody. ROAR Registry of Open Access
Repositories. http://roar.eprints.org/

14. Some overarching
themes

15. Theme
Realisation as a
catalyst for change

16. Theme
Repositories as a concept

17. Paper in Institutional Paper out
repository
Repository as a box

18. Integration with other hard and soft systems
enderisnotmyrealname
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enderisnotmyrealname/3586300347/
Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

19. “An effective institutional
repository of necessity represents
a collaboration among
librarians, information
technologists, archives and
records mangers, faculty, and
university administrators and
policymakers.”
Clifford Lynch. ARL Bi-monthly report No. 226 Feb 2003
http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml

20. “… a university–based institutional
repository is a set of services……an
institutional repository is not simply
a fixed set of software and
hardware.”
Clifford Lynch. ARL Bi-monthly report No. 226 Feb 2003
http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml

21. Sally Ben

22. The most successful
repository is the internet.
Embrace it.

23. Some pointers then:
• Distributed across a number of nodes.
•

24. Some pointers then:
• Distributed across a number of nodes.
• The services and storage should be
separate.
•

25. Some pointers then:
• Distributed across a number of nodes.
• The services and storage should be
separate.
• There should be multiple ways to search the
content.
•

26. Some pointers then:
• Distributed across a number of nodes.
• The services and storage should be
separate.
• There should be multiple ways to search the
content.
• Any service or storage can disappear, be
added or upgraded without affecting the
other systems unduly.

27. Some pointers then:
• Distributed across a number of nodes.
• The services and storage should be
Just think how you might
separate.
• There should be multiple ways to search the
make your IR work more like
content.
• Any service or storage can disappear, be
the web does.
added or upgraded without affecting the
other systems unduly.

28. "The future is here.
It's just not evenly
distributed yet."
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."
s
William Gibson
NPR Talk of the Nation
30 November 1999
Timecode: 11min 55sec
Link: discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1067220
Also: www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgld=5&prgDate=30-Nov-1999

29. "The future is here.
It's just not evenly
distributed yet."
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."
s
William Gibson
NPR Talk of the Nation
30 November 1999
Timecode: 11min 55sec
Link: discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1067220
rg/rundowns/rundown.php?prgld=5&prgDate=30-Nov-1999

31. For those who want to follow along:
http://bit.ly/89AtD

32. Using google to assay the
forms of usage

33. Using amazon's in-book
search and browse to find the
phrase.

34. 'Tim O'Reilly checked with Cory Doctorow who checked with
Lorna Toolis who checked with Barry Wellman who checked
with Ren Reynolds and Ellen Pozzi who point out that there's an
NPR Talk of the Nation broadcast from 1999 where Gibson says,
"As I've said many times, the
future is already here. It's just
not very evenly distributed."
William Gibson
NPR Talk of the Nation
30 November 1999
Timecode: 11min 55sec
Link: discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1067220
Also: www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgld=5&prgDate=30-Nov-1999

35. NPR has changed their site since
then, breaking the link to the
metadata about that recording...
whoops...

36. But the link to the actual broadcast
works:
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1067220
Notice anything interesting in
that url?

37. Hint Hint:
tml?wf Id=1067220

38. Realisation:
People search for Things – the fact
that they can only retrieve
documents concerning those
Things is incidental to them.

39. Things:
• People
• Places
• Dates
• Books
• CDs
• Performances/Events
•
• Topics/subjects
• … etc, etc

40. Things:
• What did they all have in common?
•
•

41. Things:
• What did they all have in common?
•
• They all have 'names' of one sort in real-life.
•
• But there are plenty of those Things that
don't have names on the web...
•
• How about we give them names?

42. Provide documents that directly
relate to rather than simply
mention a Thing the person is
searching for.

43. Provide documents that directly
relate to rather than simply
mention a Thing the person is
searching for.

44. “Relate” is a fluffy word.
The key is knowing how a
Document relates to a Thing.

45. “Relate” is a fluffy word.
The key is knowing how a
Document relates to a Thing.
Does it describe it,
comment on it, refer to it,
locate it, disagree with it?

46. The types of relationships
between Named Things are
very important

47. Realisation – we have been
avidly giving ourselves HTTP
names for some time now
xkcd.com/262/

49. Realisation – we have been
avidly giving ourselves HTTP
names for some time now
• http://facebook.com/benosteen
• http://twitter.com/benosteen
• http://oxfordrepo.blogspot.com
• Etc
• Etc

50. Realisation – we have been
avidly giving ourselves HTTP
names for some time now
• Things can have multiple, simultaneous names in
real-life and online.
•
• The real power comes from relating names:
•
• “This named thing {is the same as} that other
named thing”

51. And when it comes to
people on the web, there
has been a social sea-
change

52. “Have you got a
profile page on
friendsreunited?”

53. “Are you on
facebook?”
“Are you on
twitter?”

54. Linked Data and
HTTP names
Linked Data

55. Real Data
• http://data.gov
•
• http://recovery.gov
–
– - Repositories of US Federal Data and Federal
Funding information, being published in a re-
usable manner using Atom and RDF.

56. Real Data
• http://id.loc.gov
– Library of Congress publishing their authority lists
as Linked Data in RDF.

57. Yahoo and Google
indexing RDF embedded in
HTML pages (as RDFa)
O'Reilly post on Google's “adoption”
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-announces-support-for-m.html
A piece from the RDFa.info site about Yahoo and SearchMonkey's use of
RDFa
http://rdfa.info/2008/03/14/yahoo-into-semantic-web/

58. Ben Sally

59. Theme
Policies

62. 1. Accession

63. “Dedicated to the freeing
of the refereed research
literature online through
author/institution self-
archiving”
November 2000

64. “Recognised as the easiest and fastest
way to set up repositories of:
• research literature
• scientific data
• student theses
• project reports
• multimedia artefacts
• teaching materials
• scholarly collections
• digitised records
July 2009
• exhibitions and performances”

65. “Resources range from simple materials such
as Word documents or Powerpoint
presentations, to complex learning
packages, IMS, SCORM and VLE course
modules that combine various multimedia
formats such as video, audio and
animation.”
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/

66. Success story
Community specific user interfaces for
deposit, discovery and access

67. Deposit in multiple
repositories
More needs to be done!
Institutional
repository
Single Subject
repository
deposit
Other
repository

68. Sally Ben

69. Realisation:
We've reinvented too many
“wheels”

70. The Web exists
and it works.

71. Don't fight it.
Work with it.

72. Using the defacto
standards of the web
gives you a massive
advantage.

73. Defacto standards
• Transfer:
– Files (HTTP)
– Lists of things (Atom, RSS)
• Create, Read, Update, Delete:
– HTTP PUT, GET, POST, DELETE
• Names:
– URIs
• Lookups:
– DNS resolvers

74. The big advantages
• Instant community
• Lots of tried and tested software that you
don't have to write from scratch !
• No wheels need be re-invented
• May not be perfect, but it works

75. The big disadvantage
• If you really are doing something unique or
new (which is really unlikely) then try to get a
community to help you.
•
• If noone else wants to do it like you, then
think about what you are truely
accomplishing.

76. What is new?
• Doing something new does not mean using
a more refined vocabulary to describe
things.
•

77. What is new?
• I mean something that we don't have
defacto standards for

78. What is new?
• I mean something that we don't have
defacto standards for:
– real-time event notifications through the
browser
–

79. What is new?
• I mean something that we don't have
defacto standards for:
– real-time event notifications through the
browser
– Simultaneous collaborative document editing

80. What is new?
• I mean something that we don't have
defacto standards for:
– real-time event notifications through the
browser
– Simultaneous collaborative document editing
– Data qualified and ranked by evidence

81. Participation!
Name some
repositories.

82. Some things I consider to be
Repositories
• Flickr • IRs
• Facebook • Domain Rs (Jorum,
• Google Docs Pubmed, etc)
• A filesytem of BagITs • Publisher sites
• Scribd • Forums
• Slideshare • CVS/SVN/Git/Hg
• Blogs (WP/etc)
• WebDAV
• Wikis
• FTP
• Twitter/Identi.ca

83. So, what do these
repositories have in
common? Standards?
APIs?

84. So, what do these
repositories have in
common? Standards?
APIs?
Erm.... not much, but they
all contain sets of things.

85. “Trying to get stuff into your
repository?
Noone gives a SIP...”

86. Realisation: Object transfer is still
in a divergent state
• Lots of containers, lots of formats, too
many conventions that you just have to
know..

87. Realisation: Object transfer is still
in a divergent state
• Lots of containers, lots of formats, too
many conventions that you just have to
know..
•
• There is no negotiation for the format of a
SIP – you deal with what you are given.

88. Realisation: Object transfer is still
in a divergent state
• Lots of containers, lots of formats, too
many conventions that you just have to
know..
•
• There is no negotiation for the format of a
SIP – you deal with what you are given.
•
• And sometimes, you just have to go and
harvest what you can.

89. Don't Panic

90. Normal Archival Process
• (paraphrased by an observer...)
•

91. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
•
• THINGS GET PERMANENT IDS NOW!
•
• Even if it is just on a per-box basis. The item
carries that provenance throughout.
–

92. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
–

93. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
– Deal with the fragile things first, things that will
deteriorate.
–

94. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
– Deal with the fragile things first, things that will
deteriorate.
– Try to sort out issues that arise, with the next of
kin/donater.
–

95. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
– Deal with the fragile things first, things that will
deteriorate.
– Try to sort out issues that arise, with the next of
kin/donater.
– Some things may stay in the box for a long
time...

96. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
– Deal with the fragile things first
– Try to sort out issues that arise
– Some things may stay in the box
– Identify actions that need to be taken to ensure
future access.

97. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
- Characterise and catalogue the contents,
using relevant tools.

98. Normal Archival Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
- Characterise and catalogue the contents,
using relevant tools.
• - Update archival records so that people can
find the content (if they are allowed to.)

99. Digital Process
• - Accept delivery of boxes of stuff, and
record roughly what was received.
• - Triage the contents within a stable
environment.
- Characterise and catalogue the contents,
using relevant tools.
• - Update archival records so that people can
find the content (if they are allowed to.)

100. Digital Process
The media may be different.
And the tools may be too.
You are still likely to be doing`
something like this for a while.

101. Not all storage is the same
The absolute biggest benefit to any
repository is to separate out the concerns of
storage and services.
•
• It will make you life so, so much easier.
•
• Trust me.

102. Hardware, software,
people and storage will
come and go.
Your content is constant.

103. Ben Sally

104. “When it's
one click
deposit, I'll do
it"
Medical scientists at Oxford

105. Bill Hubbard: Institutional Policies and Processes
for Mandate Compliance. May 2009.
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/documents/OA
%20Choices%20-%20researcher%27s
%20view.ppt

107. What we need is:
 Deposit by stealth and other easy
solutions
 Multiple Repository Deposit Regime
(MuRDeR)
 Answers to related problems that worry
people such as multiple versions
 Automation, automation, automation

108. Copyright ©

109. “There is a supreme irony that just as
technology is allowing greater
access to books and other creative
works than ever before for education
and research, new restrictions
threaten to lock away digital content in
a way we would never countenance
for printed material.”
Dame Lynne Brindley, CEO The
British Library
Copyright for Education and Research
Golden Opportunity or Digital Black Hole?
http://www.bl.uk/ip/pdf/copyrightresearchreport.pdf

110. Legal Deposit as a
parallel to repository
mandates

111. Bodley’s
agreement 1610
“That one Book of every sort that is
new Printed, or Re-printed with
Order of Additions, be sent to the University
the Star of Oxford for the Use of the publick
Library there, … to be sent to the
Chamber Library at Oxford accordingly, upon
1637 pain of Imprisonment”
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=74953

112. “…there tower the few, the very
few, Libraries of Deposit. These
are the super-Dreadnoughts of the
literary world, and the Bodleian
claims to be among them … a
really great library should have
Universal scope, Independences,
Size, Permanence, Wealth, and
multiform Utility.”
The Bodleian Library at Oxford. Falconer Madan. 1919
http://www.archive.org/stream/bodleianlibrarya00mada/bodleianlibrarya00mada_djvu.txt

113. 2. Management and
preservation

114. alancleaver_2000 Attribution 2.0
Generic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alancleaver/
2638883650/
“Preservation aims towards preserving access”

115. Assured secure storage and
permanent access needs to be
well-managed
Aided by intra- and inter-
institutional advisory and support
services

116. Shared and
distributed
expertise

117. Sally Ben

118. Why do people
choose to interact
with systems?

119. Why do people
choose to interact
with systems?
Disproportionate
Feedback loops

120. Disproportionate Feedback Loop =>
The perception that a small effort
leads to a very great benefit.

121. Disproportionate Feedback Loop =>
The perception that a small effort
leads to a very great benefit.
Which leads to more “little efforts”
which add up!

124. High Scores
Technically trivial, but...
Psychologically addictive and
drives a lot of replay

125. High Scores
IR High scores?
●
Usage stats
●
Re-usage stats
(trackbacks, tweets,
references)

127. Ben Sally

128. Parliamentary
Office for Science
and Technology
Peer review is used in the UK for 3 main purposes:
1. Allocation of research funding
2. Publication of research in scientific journals. To
assess the quality of research submitted for
publication and to assess its importance.
3. Assess the research rating of university
departments
http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn182.pdf

129. 3. Dissemination

131. Links to: Actionable raw data; Data fusion
Links to: Interactive version; Google maps; additional visualisation

132. Open Access

134. April 1932
Ramblers set out from Bowden
Bridge for the Kinder Scout mass
trespass
http://kindertrespass.com/index.asp?ID=37

135. “What many people fail to realise is that the uplands of this
country once belonged to us, open common land, free for all
to walk at will. They were only enclosed and parcelled off to
the rich by acts of parliament pushed through by the rich. An
old rhyme goes:
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steals the goose from oft the common
Yet leave the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.”
Mike Harding
The Guardian, Wednesday 18 April 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/18/society.guar
diansocietysupplement1

136. Free!
Free Free!
Free!
Free!
Free! Free! Free!
! Free!
Free! Free!
Free!
Free
Free! Free!
Free!
Free!
FREE! !

137. Green Open Access Open options
Operates two
Mandated open access different open
access Models
(as reported by SHERPA/Romeo)
Open Archives
(OAI) Service
Gold Open Access Some journals in UKPMC allow harvesting of
the full text of all items, others allow it for only
Open access journals some items, and many do not allow it at all. See
the PMC Open Access List for specifics.
Too complicated!

138. Preview Time

139. You are here

140. Evolution Evolution
Seismic change
Rapid change
Time Time
Evolution Evolution
Step change Incremental change
Time Time

141. Trends
1. Entering a period of steady growth
and change
2. Repositories as a set of services
embedded within institutional systems
3. Names

142. Trends: Still waiting…
• Easy multiple deposit
• Collaboration between publishers,
repositories, HEIs, government and
research funders as a group
• Common policies
• Less complexity

143. Crystal ball by Hamachi! CC license. Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic
Available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mawari/2091456761/

144. Print-on-demand is going
to be big
And I don't mean printed
facsimiles.

145. What does having a book
mean if you can print one in
5 minutes for £2?
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

146. How about this scenario then? It's
all technically possible now

147. How about this scenario then? It's
all technically possible now
You print off a set of articles into a book on the
libraries book-printer.
Your collegues comments, tweets and reviews
are interleaved with the text.
Your collegues were found from your
professional social network.

148. How about this scenario then? It's
all technically possible now
You print off a set of articles into a book on the
libraries book-printer.
Your collegues comments, tweets and reviews
are interleaved with the text.
Your collegues were found from your
professional social network.

149. How about this scenario then? It's
all technically possible now
You print off a set of articles into a book on the
libraries book-printer.
Your collegues comments, tweets and reviews
are interleaved with the text.
Your collegues were found from your
professional social network.

150. How about this scenario?
You create a bookmark list of plates from 18th
century books online which you believe to be
the work of one anonymous artist.
This list with your comments is a new resource
in of itself, and can be commented on or
printed as a book.

151. Permanent books, temporary
magazines?
Is this true?
How about facsimiles that are printed, so that
a student can study with their coffee and
donuts?
And why print to paper? Why not print to digital
paper, once it arrives...