[ The following text is in the "WINDOWS-1252" character set. ]
[ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ]
[ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
Repository developers are invited to participate in a new "Repository
Challenge" prize activity to produce demonstrations of novel repository
capability during the OR08 conference.
The Open Repositories conference annually attracts developers who working on
a wide variety of repository-oriented platforms and projects from across the
world. As well as providing a forum for discussion of the cutting edge of
repository R&D, this year's conference will run a rapid cross-platform
repository integration challenge. The aim is to get delegates working in
small teams to try to quickly pull together established platforms and
services to demonstrate a glimpse of some real-life, user-relevant scenarios
and services. The "Repository Challenge" will be based around small teams of
developers trying to achieve goals set by the repository manager and user
community. This all takes place in a "scrapheap-code challenge [UK]" /
"junkyard-code wars[US]" atmosphere over the two days of the conference. An
awards ceremony at the conference dinner will celebrate the achievements of
the teams with cash prizes given to the best demos (first team prize £2,500
/ $5,000 / ?3.350).
The Repository Challenge is intended to provide concrete examples of the
ideas raised at a recent Repository Unconference, an event run by the JISC
Common Repository Interface Group (CRIG) to identify key issues that
repositories need to address to make a genuine impact in Higher Education.
These include bringing the repository closer to the researcher's working
environment, automatically generating metadata, running multiple interfaces
and taking advantage of Web 2.0 and utility computing services.
To participate in the repository challenge, register for OR08 at
http://or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ and email the Repository Challenge Chair: David
Flanders (d.flanders_at_bbk.ac.uk).
Comments are invited on the outputs of the Unconference (photos of the
flipcharts) which are available at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wocrig .
Other CRIG discussion is available via blog planet:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/jisc-crig . Background information on CRIG can
be found at:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/CRIG . For
more information on the challenge, contact the Repository Challenge Chair:
David Flanders (d.flanders_at_bbk.ac.uk).
--
Les Carr
Open Repositories 2008 Conference Chair
PS Although this is not an ostensibly "Open Access" technical challenge, the
suggested improvements will improve OA provision by making document and
metadata deposit easier. But such efforts will only be effective as part of
balanced diet of OA policy and technical development!
Received on Sun Jan 27 2008 - 13:26:05 GMT