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