Open Repositories 2010
Official caveat: The following notes can't be considered a complete summary of the day; I don't believe anyone, at any conference, could honestly say that he didn't space out here or there during a presentation or two. The notes below should be taken simply as impressions that remained with me during and after day of the conference.
keynote
Sleepy, thirsty conference-goers (for there were no refreshments during registration) were treated to David De Roure's keynote presentation about a sort of social networking tool for researchers called myExperiment. While this particular project admittedly has absolutely no impact on my own work as a repository manager at a small New England university, I did think it was fascinating that this project focuses on sharing processes and workflows researchers use to make conclusions from the great masses of data resulting from their research, and not the research itself.
The speaker did point out that most scientists aren't willing to share, instead holding their processes dear to their hearts, but it does have 4,034 members at this time from all over the world, and shares, among other things, 1,165 workflows. From the scientific community, those sounded like good numbers to me, and I hope other scientists find it in their hearts to recognize that such information sharing can only benefit other individuals, as well as science as a whole.
individual programs
The programs split up at this point. After a generous half-hour break where beverages and pastries were served (pastries are so much better in Europe... not nearly as sticky or sweet) we chose which program we preferred to attend. I have to interject that I think I stood out as the one attendee who was desperate for a cola instead of un cafe. Fortunately I found a soda machine. But I digress.
day one, session one : citation & bibliography
Having apparently failed at persuading our best and brightest to publish exclusively in our academic institutional repositories, there seems to be a movement to instead design platforms that will automatically aggregate information that will showcase all of a faculty member's scholarly work, in one place, regardless of where it was published. The three speakers all had their own software developed to serve this purpose.
All addressed the problem of authority control for author names, and most are achieving solutions which, while not bulletproof, are certainly a great improvement over nothing at all. Particularly of interest to me, since I am American and just received numerous e-mails last week about its release, was BibApp 1.0, a solution in place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (see it in practice). I believe it has great potential, and apparently, according to a question from the audience, Indiana University is also developing a similar type of solution.
While it is early in development, it could be very useful for universities and their departments to truly showcase their scholarly output in this way, whether or not it's available in an open access format. It's almost like collecting everyone's CV in a more accurate and public way.
Both the speaker and the audience member from IU did mention some faculty resistance to such a system, which amused me. Why the concern? Perhaps they are simply concerned that such a tool might become part of the tenure process, or make it easier for their department chairs to glance at a couple of web pages and say, "why aren't you doing more papers, like your colleague Mr. Green?" Who knows. I'm interested to know the true cause for their concerns.
lunch
Lunch was relatively more formal than any conference lunch I've enjoyed in the United States. We seated ourselves at rounds of ten and were served three courses: fish, beef, and a beautifully presented dessert. Bottled water and wine (wine!) was available on the table. I had the amazing luck to sit near a repository manager from the United States, so we were able to talk a little bit. The lunch was quite decent, although I'm sure it was the first time that most of my American colleagues had ever had a fish loaf for a first course. Such a shame the vegetarians missed out on that experience.
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