Post on 22-Apr-2015
description
Repository policy at The University of Northampton
Miggie Pickton
NECTAR Repository Manager
miggie.pickton@northampton.ac.uk
SUETr Repository Policy Event
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
18th February 2009
Which came first: repository or policy?
Policy!
We started to think about ‘policy’ before any of these:
• Project planning
• Choosing software
• Defining repository structure and organisation
• Specifying operational details
• And especially before gathering content
Talking, talking, talking…
The NECTAR project Steering Group produced a ‘briefing sheet’ outlining the principles which we thought should govern the repository.
We talked to everyone:
• Research leaders, research managers, research administrators, researchers, technical folk, metadata experts, copyright experts…
• The university’s Research Committee
• A Pro Vice Chancellor
• A focus group of senior researchers
• And (of course) our colleagues in the repository community
OpenDOAR
With agreement on the principles, we turned to policy - and we discovered the OpenDOAR policy tool
The tool defines ‘minimum’ and ‘optimum’ policies for :
• Metadata
• Data
• Content
• Submission
• Preservation
The Steering Group decided to try for the optimum policies, at least in the first instance.
More talking, talking, talking…
We carried on talking:
• Lots of committees and research groups:
– University Research Committee
– Research Degrees Committee
– Readers and Professors Forum
– E-Strategy Programme Board
– School Research Groups…
… and we incorporated the research community’s views into our policy and our practice.
Policy and practice
Of course translating our policies into practice hasn’t all been plain-sailing
• We don’t have much full content yet (text or other) so much of our policy has yet to be put to the test
• We struggle with the conflicting demands of repository users (e.g. researchers vs research managers)
• Sometimes pragmatism wins over policy (especially in the case of metadata vs full text)
But…
• Because of our practice of consulting widely and regularly, we do have the support of the research community (and every reason to suppose that this will continue).
URLs
• NECTAR http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/
• NECTAR briefing sheet http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/NECTAR_briefing_sheet_200607.pdf
• OpenDOAR policy tool http://www.opendoar.org/tools/en/policies.php
• NECTAR policy http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/information.html#policies