RSP Summer School 2008 – Repository publicity session
I’m traveling back from the RSP Summer School 2008 which has just finished. It was held up on the Wirral at Thornton Manor. The manor house, formally owned by Lord Leverhulme was a fantastic venue, and the food was top notch! Whilst there I gave an impromptu SWORD masterclass, and chaired the session on ‘Advocacy’.
The first of two presentations was given by Mary Robinson from SHERPA, who talked about her advocacy work for The Depot.
The second of the presentations was given by Niamh Brennan from Trinity College Dublin. This talk just blew everyone away – it was inspirational, practical, based on real experiences, and gave ideas that all the repository managers could take away with them and implement quite easily.
These are some of the insightful snippets I took away with me:
- TCD populate their repository from their CRIS. Personally I believe this is the way to go, and enjoyed the chance to talk to Niamh about the technical side of the CRIS. I’ve yet to find an open source CRIS, and was wondering if this is because so much local integration would has to take place to stitch a repository into local systems, that once you have done that, the core CRIS might as well be developed from scratch. Niamh says that this is not the case, and that a core CRIS is big enough to be worthwhile sharing (and hopes to share theirs!
) - Get in contact with, and stay in close contact with, your local research support office. They deal with the grant process, and are a good way of making contact with academics. A good time to explain the impact of the funder mandates to researchers is when they are signing the T&Cs for their latest grant.
- When it comes to publicity events, always celebrate success! Rather than having a formal launch of your repository, why not have a celebration of the items you already have in there, and the impact that has had.
- Make people feel good – they like that! Possible examples include ringing up academics who have been in the news congratulating them, and offering to archive their work. Or make some of your depositors “Featured Authors”. People like to be ‘featured”!
- Always try to get drinks at events, and once you have drinks, get some food. Once you have food, get some wine. Once you have wine, get some champagne. Once you have champagne, get a photographer. There’s nothing more that some people like that having a glass of champagne and having their photo taken at an event. This can be a powerful way of attracting senior managers.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: repositories, rsp, rspsummerschool2008
