OARS: Open Access Repository System

First attempt at liveblogging at the Shock of the Old 7 Conference. The venue is the Said Business School, University of Oxford (just a few minutes walk from the office). The conference is looking at the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education, quite a few of the presentations have focussed on JISC funded projects. Currently in a very informative and actually quite entertaining talk (and the final one of the day), Alan Bell the Records Manager and Information Compliance Officer at the University of Dundee is talking about ‘Web 2.0 and the risk to the ‘information resource‘. Overall, I think this conference has been very useful in thinking about how the OARS repository and the content stored within it will fit into the wider Internet and Web 2.0.

We are now finalising the repository development plans with our chosen developers Aptivate (http://www.aptivate.org), and work will commence in March. Aptivate will be working closely with our colleagues at the Oxford University Research Archive (http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk/access/) who will host the Fedora infrastructure for our new repository.

In December 2007 we wrote to all university departments and centres in the UK that conduct research, teaching and/or dissemination activities in issues related to migration, conflict, development and human rights, and they were asked to complete a questionnaire as a way to kick-off this consultation process. Questionnaires have now been returned and are being analysed.