Building the Foundations of an Ecology

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Building the Foundations of an Ecology

• Caroline Drury
• RUBRIC Senior Technical Officer
• RUBRIC Project
• druryc_at_usq.edu.au

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Sponsorship Funding

• The RUBRIC project is sponsored by the
• Australian Commonwealth Department of Education,
  
• Science and Training as part of the Commonwealth
  Government's Backing Australia's Ability
• An Innovation Action Plan for the Future.

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RUBRIC

• Regional
• Universities
• Building
• Research
• Infrastructure
• Collaboratively

Developing research infrastructure and
capability across regional and smaller
universities to maximise access to digital
research resources
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The RUBRIC ecology

• Late 2005 project began with 8 partners
• Partners distributed across Australia and New
  Zealand
• Project ends Dec 2007

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RUBRIC Partners - distribution
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The RUBRIC ecology

• A two year learning process
• 8 partners including lead institution
• Different backgrounds
• Different skill sets
• Different needs
• Different contributions to the project
• How do all these different members become part of
  a single ecology?

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The RUBRIC ecology - commonalities

• All partners had in common
• Needed to establish IR infrastructure
• Needed to complete within the timeframe
• Limited resources from within own institutions
• All are either small or regional universities

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The RUBRIC ecology - beginnings

• Establishment of central core team known as
  RUBRIC Central (RC)
• Recognition of need for huge commitment to
  communication and establishment of TRUST
• Recognition of need for tools to help cover the
  distance between us
• Recognition of hard road ahead!

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RUBRIC Central

• Consisted of the following components
• Technical Team
• Metadata Specialist
• Administrative and Business Staff
• Core purpose To support 8 partner project
  managers in establishing sustainable
  institutional repository infrastructure at each
  institution

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Overview
WIKI
EMAIL
FACE TO FACE
CHAT
T/CONF
TRAC
PHONE
Del.icio.us
BLOGS
S/POINT
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Tools

• Wiki (closed and authenticated)
• Trac tickets
• Email
• Weekly teleconferences
• Chat
• Phone contact
• Face-to-face meetings

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How is this like an ecology?

• Group contains many members
• All members reliant upon each other for provision
  of some type of service
• Without any given element, ecology would not have
  developed in the same way
• Trust of members that they would contribute to
  mutual benefit of ecology

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Repository Ecology

• 7 Components that make up an ecology (Stoddard,
  1995)
• Sunlight and Shade
• Average temperatures
• Average precipitation
• Wind
• Latitude and altitude
• Nature of soil
• Fire
• For example, a forest ecology

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Sunlight and Shade

• Can trees grow without sunlight?
• RUBRIC partners as sole representative from
  within their institution
• Varying levels of receptiveness from within
  institution
• Varying levels of passive / active support from
  within institutions
• Shadestunted growth
• Sunlighthealthy growth

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Average Temperatures

• Cold to hot
• Mood from within institution
• Mood from immediate supervisors of partner
  project managers (PPMs)
• Mood from PPMs colleagues, and PPMs themselves
• Cold Disinterest Hot Enthusiasm

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Average precipitation and distribution

• Watering the plants how much encouragement
  comes from within the institution?
• What sort of institutional support exists?
• Funding is there any?
• Aridlittle funds
• Rainysufficient funds

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Wind

• Obstructions to final goals
• Do these obstructions hinder the progress, or do
  they merely shape the progress?
• Calmeasy to walk
• Windydifficult to walk

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Latitude and altitude

• Partners were geographically remote from one
  another (closest partners were still over an hour
  away)
• How can an ecology survive if its so
  distributed?
• Use of tools to link members of ecology
• Poor communication links
• isolation
• Good communication links
• collaboration

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Nature of soil

• What was the driving force behind participation
  in the project?
• Will the IR become a part of the institution or
  will it remain an outlier?
• Is there institutional policy to embed this
  system into the institution?
• Poor soilweak roots
• Good soilstrong roots

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Fire

• Major (drastic) changes within the institution
  (restructuring, staff cuts, budget cuts)
• Major changes and pressures outside the
  institution (in Australia RQF)
• Threat to environment of trust
• FireThreat of destruction

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The ecology metaphor - Uses

• Useful for
• describing the participants and members of a
  repository ecology
• defining progression through repository
  establishment process, particularly at systems
  level but also at higher, people level

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The ecology metaphor - Limitations

• Not able to
• Capture degree to which peoples own
  personalities and experiences affect development
  of IR
• An ecology assumes a level of cooperation and
  trust. This is not necessarily the case with
  people and projects and must be built
• Useful for lower-level systemic description, but
  without the higher-level, people-based
  description, ecology is at risk
• Self-sustainability?

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Sustainability

• A difficult task as there are many agendas
• Cyclical
• How to sustain cycles?
• How to begin cycles?
• RUBRIC now at the end of a cycle

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Sustainability - end of cycle

• Ecology metaphor can the end of the cycle feed
  into the start of the next cycle
• What happens to knowledge, relationships,
  technical products?
• Tangible output of process
• RUBRIC Project RUBRIC Toolkit
• Useful for further generations of repository
  ecologies
• Only sustainable until the next cycle starts

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Thank you!

• Thank you!
• Questions? Comments?