profiles and repositories elsewhere

There's a terrific thread getting going on the JISC Repositories mailing list, where people are describing the repository use in their institutions. It has also diverged into discussion of how profiles and repositories interact. As well as local efforts, there is mention of some major players:

• Vivo - a "research-focussed discovery tool" from Cornell, which lets you browse or search for information about Cornell faculty and staff
• Catalyst - "brings together the intellectual force, technologies, and clinical expertise of Harvard University and its affiliates and partners to reduce the burden of human illness"
• BibApp - a "Campus Research Gateway and Expert Finder"
• OpenScholar -a "a paradigm shift in how the personal academic and research web sites are created and maintained"

I don't think our project would yet lay claim to any of these exotic descriptions, but it's great to know that other work is going on in this area - it's an exciting space!

Summary of Initial Research

There is no single standard in the presentation or content of University profiles, just as departmental websites differ widely in their design and layout so there is no common practice in representing staff. We did however find some universal basic categories of information which are used on all profiles.

It’s interesting that the take up of profiles is high but there are still people who have nothing but a name and perhaps the name of their college listed on their profile. This leads us to wonder about the level of concern among staff about putting their contact details and information about themselves online. We didn’t find any evidence to suggest that there is a bias towards age, gender or seniority in the completion or non-completion of profiles. Further research with staff members through interviews and a survey will hopefully uncover the reasons why some feel less inclined to provide details on their departmental websites.

Throughout the course of our research we kept asking questions about how users were writing and updating their profiles. In the next stage of our research we will look at how departmental profiles are managed and who are they are managed by. We’d also like to learn more about the attitudes of staff towards their University profiles and whether they feel satisfied with how their profiles represent them to the wider world.

A more detailed analysis of of initial research can be found here