Introducing: the IR Managers website
A few things happened around me at Open Repositories 2007.
One of them was an oft-expressed wish for some kind of venue for repository-rats to talk to each other. Sure, if you have a software problem, there’s usually help—but if you have a policy question, or a copyright concern, or something of that nature, you’re you-know-what outta luck. When rubber meets road around an IR, nobody’s talking.
(The current situation is somewhat fragmented, because user groups have formed around specific pieces of software. The thing is, it doesn’t matter whether you’re using DSpace or EPrints or Fedora when the question is repository policy!)
Another was someone saying to me, “You are DSpace to me [because of Caveat Lector].” That felt all kinds of wrong. I’m not DSpace. I’m not a committer, I’m not working on DSpace governance, I’m not even a major figure on the mailing lists. What I am is the only blogger talking about DSpace on a regular basis—DSpace’s unofficial, entirely off-the-record web presence.
In fact, I’m pretty darn close to the only repository-rat blogger there is. Talk about your pluralistic ignorance.
This is a sad state of affairs, and I do not approve of it. Therefore, when it became clear that our new OA journal wasn’t going to be able to use the domain I had reserved for it, I asked the rest of the board if I could use the domain for my own nefarious purposes, and they agreed.
Enter the IR-Managers website. It has a blog (though that’s mostly for my convenience; I don’t anticipate actually blogging there, though I’m open to others doing so). It has a web forum. And it has a mailing list. I don’t know if all of these organs will survive; as usual, I’m throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Mark well, IR-Managers is not an open-access advocacy site, so don’t come there to beat your breast or pontificate, because I will smack you down with a quickness. No green versus gold. No “what about the publishers?” No “this is the death of peer review!” No “the poor, poor scholarly societies.” No “we must all have mandates!” No legislative advocacy. None of that stuff. There’s other places for it (try SPARC OA Forum or JISC-REPOSITORIES). We repository-rats, we know where we stand, or we wouldn’t be doing what we are.
That said, strategic concerns (”I want a mandate. How should I go about getting one?”) are welcome; that’s part of rubber-meets-road. I don’t mean that IR managers should go head-in-the-sand ostriching. I just want to point the ideological wrangling elsewhere.
Technical questions are also welcome, but I don’t promise anybody can answer them. The real nitty-gritty software stuff is best taken to the appropriate list for the software you’re using. I’m hoping, though, that IR-Managers can be a clearinghouse for folks who haven’t yet chosen IR software and have questions about it—from the phone calls I keep getting, that’s an immense unaddressed need.
If your repository isn’t institutional, you’re still welcome. Disciplinary repositories, industry repositories, dark archives, whatever. A lot of the same issues still obtain.
So. Come help my spaghetti stick to the wall, won’t you?