The EdReNe Newsletter

16-17 September 2008, Tallinn, Estonia

By the end of the workshop series EdReNe will produce a thematic synthesis report on repository strategies. The members have given highest priority to the issues:

• Quality assurance strategies (editorial policies; technical quality assurance)
• Identifying the decisive benefits that trigger repository use by important target groups: professional publishers, public institutions, teachers…
• Connecting and cooperating with existing repositories (including overcoming barriers such as language, IPR, technical issues …)
• The cost of building and maintaining a repository (business models; initial costs; establishing a critical mass of content; sustainability …)
• Strategies for involving key actors in development process

At the workshop the members discussed these five themes. At plenum sessions members and external experts presented (very different) approaches when setting up new repositories and identifying what seems to trigger success, and how pitfalls can be avoided.

WSOY’s strategies and services on learning material repositories
The presentation from one of the leading educational publishers in Finland detailed a strategy of providing both publisher produced and user generated content through a common interface (a platform with LMS functionality developed since launch in 2001).

Heikki Karjalainen, WSOY

National Digital Resource Bank
The background, business model and choices made so far in the ambitious project of establishing a National Digital Resource Bank – a project building upon the goal of each school having a learning platform by 2008, with the ambition to ease uptake and use through providing quality digital content.

Fiona Iglesias, NWLG

National Repository Strategies: Some Higher and Further Education Examples
An overview of the differences and similarities in the strategies chosen by three repositories: JORUM (UK, 600 institutions; higher and further education), COLEG (Scotland, 40 institutions; further education) and NDLR (Ireland, 21 institutions; higher and further education). These repositories present three different types of motivations for building a repository: distribution of content; preservation of content; building a community of practice.

Charles Duncan, Intrallect

Education, content and Encyclopaedia Britannica
The current status and future plans of Britannica’s work in the school market. With a 240 year history and tradition of content creation and moving through first digitalization and up to today where much emphasis is on providing access to content the way users want it – easy, flexible and trough a number of different access routes and devices (web, LMS, portals, push technology, mobile access, eBooks, interactive whiteboards.

Adam Bates, Encyclopaedia Britannica

During the group sessions participants further analysed and elaborated these areas. From the diverse nature of different settings and contexts for establishing educational repositories it is hard, if not impossible, to do a simple and rigorous presentation of best practise.

In order to present the best possible advice to existing and coming repository owners, the coming thematic synthesis report on repository strategies will thus try to describe common obstacles and barriers, and provide examples of how they have been successfully dealt with within specific contexts. Emphasis will thus be on case descriptions combined with comparable data across countries/repositories.

In addition, existing reports and advice to repository owners on the same issues will be collected (a few examples emerged during the workshop) in order to provide as comprehensive a view on potential strategies as possible.

Group sessions also included the elaboration of the state of the art contributions and the preparation of how to deal with templates of agreements relevant to repository owners.