Phone call with DuraSpace, COAR and Latin American representatives
- Debra
- Carol
- Lautero Matas, technical lead, REMERI (Mexican Network of Institutional Repositories)
- Alberto Cabezas Bullemore, LA Referencia
- Washington ???, IBEC (Instituto Brasileiro de Ensaios de Conformidade) Sao Paulo
- Kathleen Shearer, COAR
Goal of the meeting was to learn more about what each of the LA representatives were engaged in, hear about challenges/issues, ask questions, and to look for something that we could do together in 2017-2018
Each organization works with networks of "nodes" within their country or with international LA regions.
Alberto Cabezas Bullemore
- LA Referencia –all repos in Brazil; attended OR2016
- 60% of scientific collection of resources of the region
- have developed national harvesting nodes that harvest IRs
- 80% are working well
- Conducted survey of IRs connected to those nodes to find out what they needed
- 80% are using DSpace
- Shows that “what they need” is training and upgrades
- Focus on developer-level, technical/how to upgrade issues, not so much user/manager focused
- They cannot solve the issue of training or upgrades on their own
- Why? Cannot go to that level of need in each LA country
- Some LA countries now mandate OA as a national law–Peru Argentina++
- DSpace fits in well—Argentina uses Dspace the least
- Usually consultants are from University environments
- No communities of practice that are "open"
- Development that they would like to explore—better harvesting, metadata normalization
- Most new repositories or migrations are to DSpace
- Some repos are very old DSpace instances
- Upgrades are an issue–top issue in the region
- Need community mindshare close to you to understand and upgrade the software and to keep pace with repos around the world; using consultants depends on funding which is unreliable
- Council on Science—is the ministry of science and technology, like NSF for all disciplines, main mission is to finance R and D projects, 40 years old
- Instances of DSpace began in universities
- (NOTE: LA Referencia DSpace survey results are being sent to Debra)
Debra
- Tell me about what you collect/curate–scientific databases? What type of collections?
- A: Usual scientific traditional results of research in all subjects—books, reports, articles, data++
- What versions of DSpace are they running?
- A: v 1.8-5.0 range overall; v 1.3-3.0 range in Brazil with some v 4 or 5 implementations
- Human resources infrastructure depends on the institution; if you are in the more developed regions you have good tech support; some regions only a few people
- In Brazil 50 repositories; some dissertations only libraries maybe 100 altogether; not members due to funding issues
- Currency has been devalued which makes it more difficult to be a member of DuraSpace, -25% in one year
Carol
- Do you support any international, inter-region, or inter-organizational communications?
- Left to regional networks; cannot support demands for information from a broader community
- Not a communication problem; in most cases the human resources to support communications are not available
- Our communication is with national nodes; no crossover; framework important
- Demands from national nodes regarding training and upgrades
- Most representative people are at the national nodes
- Concern about answering questions—no bandwidth, no capacity
Kathleen
Strategy for improving capacity at a national level would benefit all
Detailed strategy for what training/communications might look like—train the trainer, other could be future topic
Debra
- Perhaps a Mellon planning grant that could include an assessment of older software needing upgrades; upgrades national nodes first;
grow local ability/aapacity - Is there a language barrier because most of discussion is in english?
- A: IT skills are more important than language; sometimes it’s a very good excuse not to participate; more of a problem of technical understanding
- Travel to training events is a problem.
- What training is being planned in Brazil?
- Materials creation around IT issues; wiki documentation of individual installation issues; GT and Skype contact; tech teams at institutions; more needs based than on installations and upgrades
- Distance training issues–need to study how to do it in a better way; open to help
- DSpace is very flexible but it is very difficult to know how to use it to it’s best advantage; Lack of spanish documentation
- Pursue funding; understand better the social organizations—how they work together and develop a greater understanding of technical challenges; develop staffing models to target training
Other
- Mismatch of mandatory government dictates and ability to meet them; lack of tools; unfunded mandates
- Mexico does have some funding matched with mandates
- Look at collaborative models for sharing expertise across communities of practice
- Competition among universities is fierce so this model may not work; lack of cooperation; lack of human resources; researchers have resources but libraries do not have resources (Argentina and reality of many LA countries)
Take aways
- This group will continue to meet (doodle poll) and focus on grant planning
- DSpace in Latin American countries survey analysis
