Evolving role of the institutional repository breakout

I attended an interesting breakout session on the evolving role of the institutional repository in promoting library research support. Garret McMahon provided background about the Research Support System developed at Trinity College Dublin. The RSS is a web-based service allowing research staff to generate CVs and a researcher’s profile from information provided about their research activity. It is fully integrated with complementary systems in the university such as human resources and pushes information out to other services and systems including the institutional repository TARA. The research staff need only enter their publication and research activities once and the information is pushed out internally and externally.

Jessica Eustace, one of 4 Research Support Librarians outlined the kinds of strategies she employed to embed herself into the research process. For postgraduates she offers:

• Specialist training days on database tips and tricks
• Going into labs and assisting researchers on a one-to-one basis
• Drop-in sessions for Endnote queries

For principal investigators she provides:
• Researcher profiling
• Assisted deposit into the IR
• One-to-one training on using the RSS and IR

Both the RSS and institutional repository are promoted by newsletters and bulletins but it is advocacy at the level of individual researchers that has paid the most dividends in that the Research Support Librarian is seen to actively to engage with researchers and their needs. Embedding herself into the workflow for research profiling adds value to the RSS and provides a fuller picture of research activity while promoting output via the institutional repository. Not all institutions have the benefit of the kind of integrated system available at Trinity but getting into schools, faculties and departments and improving dialogue with researchers is a vital first step to understanding their needs and working towards a more holistic approach to improve library support for research. Institutional repositories have created additional work but have enabled librarians to assist in promoting research at our institutions. By adapting our role to meet evolving needs we can help to prevent librarians from becoming irrelevant which in Joseph Janes’ view is the greatest threat to the profession.

Twittering conferences: public notes, the back channel conversation, and other uses

Twitter has entered mainstream in a big way over the past few months. It seems like everywhere one turns someone mentions twittering this or tweeting that. For those who were at the Tools of Change Conference in New York earlier this year, the fascination with the service was such that you might think that twitter will replace the book, the e-book, the blog, and every other form of human communication. Those of us in the book and serials worlds can rest assured that twitter wont displace publishers or libraries anytime soon.

A lot of people who haven’t used twitter ask, “What’s the point?” A fair question, at first glance. With a limit of 140 characters and streamed to the whole world, tweets are too short for meaningful analysis, and distributed so widely as to be too diffuse to be considered a “conversation”. And yet, their use and value can be quite amazing, particularly in the context of a conference.

Many people at meetings take notes; scribbling down their thoughts, noting interesting things that people said, or links to follow-up on for more information. Why keep those notes in your hands only? Others might benefit from sharing these ideas – and credited to the speaker if they are theirs. You might benefit too, by broadcasting your interest in those ideas. Several times, when I’ve expressed fascination or interest in some comment, others monitoring my tweets will pass along additional information. Similarly, people who I don’t know and have never met who are following the meeting have reached out to me with additional information or to talk further. This is part of the reason we all attend conferences and twitter can help us find others with similar interests and business needs.

One of the most interesting uses of twitter is in the back channel discussions and commentary that can take place during a meeting. Much of the twittering during a meeting is parroting or paraphrasing what the speaker is saying. This can be useful, particularly in retrospect or for those who aren’t present and for you as I just noted. However, the simultaneous chatting that can occur on twitter, I think is more valuable. It gives people an opportunity to think more critically about what is said, link to other resources and enrich the conversation. Certainly, this takes some skill at multi-tasking and perhaps detracts from the attention due the speaker. However, my feeling is that lecturing to people is a decidedly one-way form of communication and while challenging in an in-person forum, virtual dialog, if respectful, can enhance the experience of the lecture format.

One can’t be everywhere all the time. Often at a busy conference, there are multiple session of interest that overlap and choosing one session over another can be a challenge. At a meeting where many people are twittering, you can get a sense of what was being said, what people thought about what was said, as well as have and follow the links to more information.

One of the benefits to twitter is that it’s short, sweet, and quick. A long blog post can take a long time to write and (hopefully) be well written. A tweet, with its tight size limit forces you to be judicious in what you say.

I’m a fairly active twitter-er, but by no means one of the chattiest on the network. Among the most active people I follow, Dave Winer has posted more than 13K tweets, and Robert Scoble has posted more than 19K tweets. How do these people find the time to do anything else, I wonder? But you can expect that I, and several others in the community, will be tweeting away a fast as our laptops, iPhones or Blackberries (or just possibly the network speed at the conference center) can keep up.

Follow the UKSG 2009 conference on twitter by using the search button at the bottom of the twitter page using the hashtag #UKSG09. Not surprisingly, theres's already a lot of tweeting going on there.

First timer at UKSG Conference

As a first timer at the UKSG Conference I was unsure what to expect when I attended the opening of the Conference yesterday morning. Paul Harwood, UKSG Chair introduced the 31st UKSG Conference admitting that he had been a bit concerned that people might not come to Torquay in the usual numbers? He needn’t have worried though, judging by the 754 delegates at the event this year it seems people have battled with the snow to get to the new seaside location. In contrast to the 14 hours spent at Gatwick Airport by one of the speakers, Kevin Guthrie, my own 4-hour journey from Paddington Station in London was relatively straightforward.

So what did I learn yesterday? I watched and listened with interest to James Gray’s presentation ‘The Digital Supply Chain’ but was a bit worried when the first few slides contained pictures of warehouses and machines in Nashville. Fortunately Gray, CEO of Ingram, was an enthusiastic speaker and skilfully presented an overview of the complex world of electronic content distribution with a focus on integration. I was interested to hear how Ingram are working with Microsoft, who, he said ‘are trying to catch up with Google’. The Google aim had seemed ambitious a few years back but now everyone is interested in indexing all their content and offering it in new formats. The presentation was interesting and covered a wide range of topics from digital printing to widgets under the digital supply chain umbrella. While it seemed initially like a sales pitch for the variety of products and services offered by Ingram, including barges strangely, it successfully offered an insight into the complexity of electronic content distribution and the opportunities offered by the rapidly changing landscape.

Next up was another interesting and entertaining speaker, Muir Gray, NHS National Knowledge Service. He talked about the way medical evidence is presented and expressed in journals and how there are many flaws in the process of research reporting, peer reviewing and editing. He argued that errors due to chance and incomplete reporting of research leads to an unfair positive bias. He joked that he should publish a ‘Journal of Negative Research’ and mentioned that on a recent visit to Google he was the oldest one there by about 80 years…

He also suggested that researchers need more training and highlighted the growing influence of industry in trials leading to constraints on data made available. He also mentioned his work on reducing the carbon footprint of the NHS and its supply chains. See www.knowledgeintoaction.org for further information.

Kevin Guthrie, Ithaka, talked about sustainability and, like the first two speakers, mentioned Google in his presentation. He said that we are now all involved in the academic enterprise and that we use the same tool (i.e. Google) for very different searches.

He spoke of the speed of growth and innovation which now makes today’s value-added feature (which would have give an individual or organisation competitive advantage for years previously) tomorrow’s commodity.

He used the newspaper industry as an example and warning of the possible future of all publishing. Newspapers successfully sold advertising, in particular classifieds, and this revenue plus subscriptions ensured that the market was buoyant for a long time. Now, the market for newspapers is shrinking with the growth of the web and print advertising revenue has slumped and even online advertising has slowed down. Some argue that with a vast increase in the different ways we can access news (and be sold to) the newspaper industry is in permanent decline. He argued that the traditional insulators for scholarly publishers were no longer available and that more focus on the end user was the key to survival for the publishing industry. At least I think that's what he argued but with the low lighting and my poor notetaking I could be mistaken...