We last blogged here about DepositMO on 14 February. At that time we had submitted a bid to a JISC call for proposals – Deposit Projects: Benefits Realisation – to build on the work through a new project, already identified in the bid as DepositMOre. The aim of that call was to offer some direct continuation for projects in the original JISC Repository Deposit programme strand, for successful bids. For that reason there would be a fast-track presentation and evaluation of bids, with a view to new projects starting in March 2012, and finishing within 6 months.

While we heard positive feedback from the evaluation committee, we didn’t get the green light to begin in March. Instead the light turned green in July. Bigger wheels than this decision have been turning at JISC, so some indecision was understandable, even if we were left in a period of uncertainty, not sure when or if the new project would get approval. Despite the delay, it says a great deal about the commitment of JISC and programme manager Balviar Notay to this area of work, and we are grateful that she persisted and delivered the project to us.

Projects emerge from calls, and are directed by those calls. The requirement of this call was to show deposit of more content in real repositories, using the tools developed in the first phase of the work, in our case DepositMO. In other words, a focus on deposit rather than development. A consequent requirement was that we partner with some institutional repositories: in DepositMO we had partnered with technical developers. These would not be the same partners, although the small core project  team at Southampton would be the same.

This, then, is what the project looks like, as described in the project proposal. This was the final version to be submitted to JISC and includes changes responding to feedback from the evaluation committee. Although this was the version that was finally accepted, and forms the basis of the project, the outcome remained uncertain at this stage. It can be seen from the cover page that this version was anticipating a schedule starting in June 2012.

So with repository partners on board and the bid submitted, we waited to report the formal outcome to them, believing throughout that the outcome was imminent. When that decision arrived some months after the original submission and presentation we realised we would have a job to keep all the partners with us on a revised schedule, and that we would have to be flexible on a that schedule. It was unlikely we would be able to start immediately.

Does anyone remember the summer of 2012? In the UK it was essentially the Olympics, then everyone went away to recover. I’m pleased to say, however, that we were able to use that time to work with the respective repository partners to put together a revised project timescale that they could work with. As a result the project will run for 6 months to end March 2013.

There has been one significant change. I was fortunate to work with Dave Tarrant as the axis of DepositMO at Southampton. Dave motivated the shape and development profile of both projects, but in the intervening period has committed to representing Southampton in other big projects. In his place we are delighted to welcome Tim Brody to DepositMOre. Tim is known for his distinguished work in the repository field, most recently as lead developer for EPrints but also for related repository services such as ROAR, Citebase, and others.

Given the time that elapsed since the bid, the subsequent space that created for discussion and thinking about the work, and surrounding developments, not everything about the project will be exactly as envisaged. We will explore what has changed in terms of technical development, and introduce each of our repository partners, in the next posts.

Actually, one partner in the project has fallen. Our original partners from Edinburgh University have left the project. That was their choice. It would be glib to say these things happen, but this has not happened on any other project I have managed, so I am sorry it happened here.

After some sensitive discussions with Balviar Notay, our programme manager at JISC, I am pleased to report that we will be taking the work due to be done by Edinburgh forward, and we have recruited a leading expert to help with that. There will be a short extension to the project, to the end of September, to allow this part of the work to be completed. In other words, nothing will be lost from the original project plan as a result of this local problem.

It has to be said that Balviar’s approach throughout these difficulties has been to enable all the project work to be completed positively, and she has shown great goodwill and flexibility to facilitate this.

We have a full project meeting scheduled for next week to assess the ramifications of these developments for the whole project team, and to assure that we have covered all angles in our revised project plan. It would be premature to blog more details ahead of that meeting,

Beyond the project management issues, there has been progress on the technical front. We have been running preliminary tests on two deposit tools: a pop-up interface for Word 2010 to enable direct deposit in a selected repository for the work being prepared in the application; and a more general Dropbox-like drag-and-drop tool that works with desktop file management systems such as Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. The conclusion of those tests is that we can move on to more formal and substantial user tests.

Again, it might be premature to reveal too much about these tools ahead of the tests, so that all users are starting from the same point, of no prior experience. (Not that our target users, all recommended by our repository and disciplinary content partners, are likely to be reading this blog.)

Perhaps a bigger problem is how to present these tools here. At a recent JISC Repository Deposit programme meeting (Birmingham, 1 March, see this report on the meeting) my presentation consisted of a live demonstration of one tool, a short video of the other (had time permitted), all held together loosely by a few slides. Before we overload this post, I’ll promise we will give these tools plenty of coverage in future posts, trying all reasonable representations, so that more people can understand and get to try for themselves.

Engagement with the Researcher Community: Effecting Culture Change

The aim of DepositMO is to effect culture change among researchers to use repositories in their everyday workflows. The key to the success of the DepositMO project will be the negotiation of a new relationship between researchers and the repository, including using the developed technology solutions. This project will seek to form deep engagements with researchers from a number of disciplines, a number of existing repository projects and a number of institutions.

The DepositMO user community will initially be drawn from researchers from across the Universities of Southampton and Edinburgh, with focus on disciplines which have investments in current JISC repository activities and multi‐institutional research user communities - in the areas of archaeology, chemistry, materials science – and that are principal users of Microsoft Office. We are working with these user communities already as part of the JISC Institutional Data Management Blueprint (IDMB) project.

Teaching activities, across the disciplines, will be represented by the team responsible for the Southampton EdShare repository,  and the Humbox project.

Edinburgh University will represent a different repository infrastructure (DSpace).

The principal stakeholders are researchers and lecturers, and this project will aim at trainee and early‐career researchers, such as postgraduate students, postdoctoral research assistants and junior lecturers, who by definition have more time for engagement and who offer a greater chance of developing new practice. Our secondary stakeholders are librarians and repository staff (repository liaison officers and repository managers) who mediate, manage and offer leadership on repository engagement.

The major mechanism of researcher engagement undertaken by this project will be deskside coaching, i.e. face to face, one‐on‐one training and consultation. This is the recently established mechanism of the University of Southampton’s Library Repository Team and has also been adopted by the University of Edinburgh’s Research Publications Service.

Engagement methodology

i. Develop training resources (presentations, videos, web resources) in conjunction with the initial set of focus communities (Archaelogy, Chemistry, Materials Science, EdShare)

a. The resources will comprise a Deskside Coaching Kit (DSC) for use in one‐to‐one training and a Virtual DSC (VDSC) as a supplementary support resource that can be used by trainees and end users after their deskside sessions, that can be shared with colleagues, and that will be used in Graduate School research training modules.
b. The resources will focus on the extended repository capabilities developed by this project, and on those capabilities developed by other projects in the Deposit programme.

ii. Train the trainers (Southampton and Edinburgh library liaison officers)
iii. Run an in‐depth program of deskside training to whole University staff
iv. Monitor the effects of the training program, both qualitatively in terms of change of attitudes and behaviour and quantitatively in terms of the use of the repository
v. Roll out the program to the disciplinary research and teaching users.
vi. The developer community will be targeted through JISC mechanisms (e.g. dev8D), Microsoft Research, EPrints, and the researcher communities. We will take leadership of the OfficeSWORD open source project.

Close working relationships should exist between the 3 layers of the team (shown in the figure) with quarterly (or more) meetings involving all partners. The core investigators and project manager will interface discussion between developers and training/user team.