Repository does not mean much to a researcher but it has a very specific meaning to a librarian. Therefore we need to make sure that there are definitions that can be tailored to specific audiences to ensure that messages are understood.
Maybe this is not a definiton issue but a communication issue. Rather than having separate definitions, maybe more advice on communicating to different audiences is required.
Not sure we should get too hung up on terminology. Repository, library, cris, call it what you will. As Andy points out out, its how we communicate the key issues to different audiences and stakeholders that's important.
Terminology is important, as part of communication
We should stop talking about repositories - this is not a meaningful, especially not to 'end users'. At the JISC Innovation Forum this week I was in a session where Bill Hubbard from the 'Repositories Support Project' spoke for half an hour about where we were with Open Access to research, what the stumbling blocks were etc. At the end of the session someone in the audience asked a question about JORUM.
Now - if the session had been about 'Open Access to Research' rather than 'Repositories' then presumably someone solely interested in learning object repositories wouldn't have expected to hear about them there. On the otherhand, if it had been called 'Storing and giving access to learning objects' we would have had a stronger showing of educators and educational technologists.
We need to talk about what we are doing, not what is doing it. I don't go round (usually) talking to academics or students about 'the database' - it clearly wouldn't be helpful.
So, I don't quite agree with the original idea - it isn't about changing our definitions (that would just get even more confusing for all of us), it is about talking about what we do, not the tools we use. In a sense I'm saying lets not call a spade, a spade, but 'a way of digging your garden'
Repository and Institutional Repository and further qualifications of those are useful definitions in our development community at present - we need some words we understand and that are in current usage . However, it would be great to evolve other words that were friendly to our depositors. We resort to 'EdShare - a resource for sharing' in our discussions with academics in our current project because 'repository' is unfriendly. 'Database' is also problematic but its hard not to be so vague that others don't understand. Then its difficult to be persuasive! Or perhaps it just takes time - we were talking about making esoteric knowledge visible before we had the words 'Open Access' to help us.
Vote Up
Vote Down
Post New Comment
Close