1.
A medley of:
For repositories to succeed they have to
end. Reflections on the repository scene
The once and future library –
reimagining the national library as
infrastructure service provider in an open
science world
Dr Torsten Reimer
Head of Research Services
Torsten.Reimer@bl.uk / @torstenreimer
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8357-9422
UKCoRR meeting, British Library, London, 10 September 2018

2.
Authors do not care about
repository systems
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonbain/33169141452/ CC BY NC ND 2.0

3.
Readers do not care about
repository systems
https://www.flickr.com/photos/p_marione/10353933614/ CC BY NC ND 2.0

4.
What matters is the repository
function, its purpose
https://www.flickr.com/photos/missrogue/1064784666/ CC BY SA 2.0

5.
The repository function is the
same as that of a library: help
people to find, access and use
information – persistently.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewgustar/16793367681/ CC BY ND 2.0

6.
You don’t need to build a local
system to deliver this function.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/han_shot_first/7771438844/ CC BY 2.0

7.
We too often think about locally
developed systems.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mukluk/207619079/ CC BY 2.0

8.
As a result we build local
systems, and, from a global
perspective, maintain them badly.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/waynerd/6677201937/ CC BY NC ND 2.0

9.
Conceptualising the repository
service mostly as local repository
system has dangers:
•Inefficiency (duplication of effort)
•Systems-over-service approach
•Over-customisation hinders
interoperability and staying
up-to-date

10.
We should focus on repository
services instead of systems.
We should ask ourselves whether
it is always best to develop and
host our own repository system.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/betsyweber/8734581153/ CC BY 2.0

11.
www.bl.uk 11
A note from the sponsor…

12.
www.bl.uk 12
Libraries in a changing environment
• Sustainable funding?
• Declining use (in some
areas)?
• Research is digital, are we?
• Are we still needed for
discovery?
• In an open world, do we still
have a role for access to
digital content?
• Global content grows so
fast, our collections are
shrinking (relatively)

13.
www.bl.uk 13
Living Knowledge
• The British Library Act tasks us to
– “[be] a national centre for reference,
study and bibliographical and other
information services”
– to make our services “available in
particular to institutions of education and
learning, other libraries and industry” and
to contribute “to the efficient management
of other libraries and information
services”.
• Living Knowledge articulates the vision of
the British Library as the most open,
creative and innovative institution of its
kind.

14.
www.bl.uk 14
Collections aren’t always the answer
We need to rethink the idea of a national collection as just
‘the stuff’ the Library holds. It is now about sustaining the
global knowledge environment – open and persistent/
Other content
BL collections
Open Access
Digital, onsite
access
Digital, remote
access
BL collections

15.
www.bl.uk 15
New Service Strategy
• Discover content, regardless of format or location
• Identify relevant information within that content
• Unified discovery workflow
Find
• Unified access workflow
• Just-in-time provision for external content
• Workspaces and tools
Use
• Digital collection unification
• Collection management as a serviceShare
https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.409/

16.
www.bl.uk 16
BL data strategy
‘Our vision for the British Library is that research data are as
integrated into our collections, research and services as text
is today.’
Data Archiving and
Preservation
Data Discovery,
Access and Reuse
Data CreationData Management

17.
www.bl.uk 17
Collection Management as a Service
Digitisation
• On (user)
demand
• For
institutions
Metadata &
Preservation
• Enhance content
• Provide
identifiers
• Build semantic
links
• Licensing
• Preservation
across formats
Discovery
• BL & external content
• Feed external
discovery platforms
(e.g. Google)
• Discovery as a service
• Single Digital
Presence
• BL disocvery widget
Analysis
• Text and data
mining
• Machine interfaces
• Visualisation
• Machine learning
Access
• Shared platform
• Institutional portals
• Machine interfaces
• Push to external
platforms

18.
www.bl.uk 18
Repository related plans
• Re-develop national
preservation system (>5m
items, petabyte-scale) into
multi-tenancy service
• Develop access layer with
multiple (logical) repositories
• Pilot for a multi-tenancy
(4/20 partner organisations)
access repository
• Consider national OA
preservation approach
• Discussions with Jisc and
others on partnerships
Preservation Layer
Services Layer
Access Layer
EThOS Data.bl.uk
BL
Institutional
Repository
Partner
Repositories

19.
www.bl.uk 19
And back to the repository matter

20.
www.bl.uk 20
What the UK could have done in 2012
• Procure preservation
solution
• Procure access
solution
• Mandate deposit of
all scholarly content
on this platform
• Provide portals for each higher education organisation (HEI)
• Provide interfaces so HEIs and other platforms can push
and pull content
Discovery & Access
Humans Machines
National preservation solution
Content deposited by
Machines Authors

21.
www.bl.uk 21
Repositories as a national concern
• In February 2016, the Department for Business, Innovation
& Skills published an independent report on open access,
written by Professor Adam Tickell.
• One of his recommendations was “that the British Library,
Research Libraries UK and the Society of College, National
and University Libraries (SCONUL) convene, with
appropriate support, to advise as to the best mechanisms to
ensure that there is at least one permanent copy of an
open access publication and that due regard is given to
long term curation of digital assets.”
• [Now – think of “Plan S”!]

22.
www.bl.uk 22
UUK repositories working group
• UUK OA Coordination Group with different stakeholders
(government, funders, HEIs, publishers, libraries)
• A repositories working group was
set up to look into Adam Tickell’s
recommendations.
• Meetings throughout 2017, a
workshop at the British Library
and a survey of UKCoRR
repository managers.
• See the final report.

23.
www.bl.uk 23
UK OA landscape – positives
Strong community
Track record for open
solutions
Jisc
services
UK PubMed
Central
Technical
expertise
EThOS
Many
repositories
Policies

24.
www.bl.uk 24
Challenges, (not just) for the UK
1. Concerns about sustainability of the
underlying repository software package
2. Difficulties with CRIS system integration
3. Difficulties with integration with university
systems (other than CRIS)
4. Difficulties with maintaining custom
functionality
5. Issues with changing publisher and/or
funder policies changing compliance
status of articles
6. Lack of integration with identifiers
(such as ORCID or DOIs)
7. Limitation of reuse through deposit
licence (‘all rights reserved’), e.g.
for text and data mining
8. Limited/no facilities (such as API) to
support text and data mining
9. Linking publications to related datasets
(and vice versa)
10. Linking publications to relevant funders
11. Management effort for journal
embargoes
12. No or limited preservation functionality
13. Not enough resource to update from
older/out-of date version of repository
software
14. Not enough staff resource for
operational management
15. Reporting facilities not sufficient for
funder reporting
16. Reporting facilities not sufficient for
internal reporting
17. Technical support: lack of skills /
capability
18. Technical support: not enough capacity
19. Tracking/integrating AAMs deposited in
subject/other institutional repositories
(REF OA policy)
20. Usability and user interface issues
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1136075

25.
www.bl.uk 25
Selected WG recommendations
• [Many recommendations on metadata, persistent identifiers etc.]
• A study into the feasibility of a national preservation solution be
undertaken, recognising that the British Library and Jisc are key
stakeholders.
• HEIs, Jisc, subject repositories and other stakeholders take
forward as a high priority improvements in the user experience.
• A study be conducted to explore the need for national repository
solutions or ‘hubs’ for one or all of the big challenges –
discoverability, sustainability and preservation. This study will
consider costs and benefits, and ultimately seek to define the
guiding principles and services […].

26.
www.bl.uk 26
A national preservation solution?
• The British Library is already preserving the nation’s
published output, working with UK legal deposit libraries.
• However, we are only allowed to give access on our
premises and it doesn’t cover UK content not published by
UK publishers (unless it is in our web archive). So the
current solution isn’t fit for (this) purpose.
• A solution wouldn’t require a single national repository. It
could be done by pushing/pulling content from repositories
to one or more preservation platforms. From a preservation
perspective this may be better than a single system.

27.
www.bl.uk 27
A national discovery solution?
• [Isn’t that Google? ;-)] May or may not be useful, but does
not require a single, national repository.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/62954923@N03/15625479052/ CC BY 2.0

28.
www.bl.uk 28
What could a national repository fix?
1. Concerns about sustainability of the
underlying repository software package
2. Difficulties with CRIS system integration
3. Difficulties with integration with university
systems (other than CRIS)
4. Difficulties with maintaining custom
functionality
5. Issues with changing publisher and/or
funder policies changing compliance
status of articles
6. Lack of integration with identifiers
(such as ORCID or DOIs)
7. Limitation of reuse through deposit
licence (‘all rights reserved’), e.g.
for text and data mining
8. Limited/no facilities (such as API) to
support text and data mining
9. Linking publications to related datasets
(and vice versa)
10. Linking publications to relevant funders
11. Management effort for journal
embargoes
12. No or limited preservation functionality
13. Not enough resource to update from
older/out-of date version of repository
software
14. Not enough staff resource for
operational management
15. Reporting facilities not sufficient for
funder reporting
16. Reporting facilities not sufficient for
internal reporting
17. Technical support: lack of skills /
capability
18. Technical support: not enough capacity
19. Tracking/integrating AAMs deposited in
subject/other institutional repositories
(REF OA policy)
20. Usability and user interface issues
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1136075

29.
www.bl.uk 29
One system to rule them all?
• A singe repository platform sounds tempting.
• However:
– Can one monolith meet all needs?
– Competition has benefits!
– It is getting easier to exchange data
between systems
– Multi-tenancy is hard
– Resilience vs. single point of failure
– Local resistance to giving up in-house system
• With a government mandate unlikely and no obvious technology
solution a gradual move to more shared services seems a more
likely solution. If they are good enough, we might still get there.

30.
www.bl.uk 30
Concluding thoughts
• Stop customising and forking.
• Think in service, not systems
terms.
• Only develop your own systems if
you can do it better than others.
• Can we at least gradually move to
more shared services please?
• We need an internationally
coordinated approach to
preservation.