Quick facts about Open Repositories: there are about 350 people here, but no lines at the women’s bathrooms; many PowerBooks are in attendance; use of PowerPoint is considerably above average; number of cell phones ringing during presentations is considerably below average; and “continuous partial attention” is highly evident in the presentation rooms, where there is free wireless.
Yesterday morning brought the last of the user group sessions. I went to some talks about DSpace, including one about a study done at Cornell to evaluate participation and growth of their DSpace implementation and to determine why scholars do not use it. Based on comments made after the presentation, the study confimed previous findings and experience at other institutions.
One big concern was the practice (now maybe less widespread?) of institutions populating a new DSpace installation with communities, even if there are no documents associated with it. Consensus is that this is not good marketing and makes for poor end-user experience. It’s kind of like social networking sites: if lots of people are using one, more people want to join; if no one’s using it, it’s must be uncool, a bad idea, etc.
Later in the day, James Hilton, the CIO at University of Virginia, gave the first keynote address. Hilton is a dynamic speaker; he used to be a professor of psychology (not sure if he still teaches at all), and he must be very engaging in the classroom. He related his favorite feedback that he ever received from a student: “Breathe occasionally.” Hilton discussed the pros and cons of using open source software and dwelt on the idea of inter-institutional collaboration in developing new applications and tools. He talked about what collaboration means and contrasted it with cooperation. Collaboration involves shared purpose and vision, while cooperation can be as simple as not actively harming the other party.
Hilton digressed (his word) into the danger of the “pure property” concept of ideas and how it may paralyze and cripple creative and intellectual development in the future. Rules about what can be copyrighted and patented are expanding and threaten what the university is all about.
Hilton was a great after-lunch speaker–I definitely recommend you take the opportunity to hear him if it comes along.
Thanks for blogging about the Open Repositories conference. It’s interesting to read about it. I’m glad your Mac did not go up in flames and I like your observation about the bathroom lines.
Wow, Hilton gets around. He spoke at Definitely Digital in Seattle on the 19th as well. Sounds like he covered many of the same topics on copyright and intellectual property.