OARS: Open Access Repository System

The current issue of the journal of the Association of Librarians and Information professionals in the Social Sciences (ALISS) includes an article about the OARS project. The July 2008 issue (vol. 3, no. 4) of ALISS Quarterly focuses on digital repositories. The article by the FMO team broadly outlines the main objectives and activities of the OARS project, why we felt it important to replace the current repository system and the technical challenges and solutions adopted to achieve this implementation. The article is available in full text (PDF file).

On the 31 March 2008, the OARS project team hosted a meeting bringing together representatives of institutions from its network of advisors from the higher education (HE) sector in the UK.

The Forced Migration Online (FMO) team established a network of advisors for the OARS project in November 2007. It is comprised of researchers and academics from higher education (HE) institutions, as well as some students. We asked network members to complete a brief questionnaire about their usage, opinions and expectations of FMO. This information is being used to inform the team in its work to make the enhancements to FMO through the OARS project. The results of this user survey will be made available in the coming weeks.

At the meeting held in March in Oxford, discussions centred around how participants (as well as their colleagues and students) currently use FMO, and what they find particularly useful and not-so useful. This led onto a discussion about how FMO might be improved to better facilitate colleagues in their work. Among other things, it was agreed that the Web Catalogue could probably be scrapped as an independent tool and its contents largely be reallocated elsewhere on FMO; a catalogue of academic and training courses on FMO would be a useful tool; and we should collaborate in attempting to develop a process whereby copyright is sought to include in the FMO repository all relevant Masters and doctoral theses emanating from HE institutions in the UK. It was also agreed that staff or students from these institutions might contribute to FMO’s collection of research guides and resource summaries.

A summary of these discussions will be circulated among network members before being made public on the OARS website. The meeting held in March was held in parallel with a meeting of the OARS Steering Committee, where technical issues of the OARS project development were discussed at length.

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.

In November 2007, the FMO team established a network of advisors for the OARS project, comprised of representatives of higher education (HE) institutions in the UK. Students, researchers and academics from universities and colleges comprise the majority of FMO’s users. It is therefore important to involve them in the FMO portal’s redevelopment and enhancement.

On behalf of the FMO team, the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), Professor Roger Zetter, wrote to academic departments and centres in the UK requesting their input. We are hoping to conduct this consultation with as many university departments and centres in the UK as possible that conduct research, teaching and/or dissemination activities in issues related to migration, conflict, development and human rights. We are asking them to complete a brief questionnaire about their usage, opinions and expectations of FMO. This information will be used to inform the team in its work to make the enhancements to FMO through the OARS project.

In the interests of transparency and encouraging further information sharing and collaboration, the feedback received will be consolidated into a summarised report and shared with network respondents. We will also provide regular updates on the progress of the HE network’s input.

While for practical reasons this advisory group is formally comprised of representatives from HE institutions in the UK, the FMO team would strongly encourage all users of FMO – whether or not they be in the HE sector and/or in the UK – to provide us with feedback. In this way, they will be contributing to the OARS project by assisting the team in making the most appropriate changes to FMO to benefit all users.

The questionnaire on FMO usage can be completed and submitted online. Alternatively, the questionnaire can be downloaded as a text document and returned to the FMO team by email (fmo@qeh.ox.ac.uk), fax (01865 270721) or post (FMO Team, Refugee Studies Centre, Dept. of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB).