OARS: Open Access Repository System

On Wednesday 14th May we had a meeting with our developers, which happens at the end of each development cycle (typically lasting 2 weeks). At the beginning of this cycle we agreed that basic functionality would be delivered around 2 scenarios covering the web-based user and management interfaces, and the underlying repository technology. These were:

• Finding and printing a known document
• Editing document metadata

The functionality was delivered on Tuesday 14th May and was signed-off by the OARS team at the meeting. The work done so far now provides a base for the next cycle of development, due to be completed on Friday 30th May, followed by a development meeting on Monday 2nd June. The priorities and deliverables for this next cycle were agreed, and briefly are:

• Improved functionality around searching for documents, including use of search results lists
• Improvements to the management interface regarding metadata add/edit
• New functionality for inserting documents into the repository

On Monday 28th April the software development part of the OARS project started. On Monday and Tuesday 28/29 April we had ‘Kick-off’ meetings with developers from our consultants (Aptivate). The two days were extremely productive, during which we discussed the schedule for for deliverables and testing, access to computing facilities and access to the repository at Oxford University Research Archive.

Basically increasing functionality will be delivered to the OARS Team on roughly a 2-weekly cycle over the next 12 weeks. The OARS team will test the delivery, advise on functionality issues and problems found, then set the priorities / deliverables for the following 2 weeks, and so on.

There will be an evaluation of the development process itself, with a view to highlighting the challenges we face and hopefully to provide lessons for future projects. This is a very important part of this phase of the project and will be managed by our evaluation consultant Jan Rae.