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