Technical Support for ePrints - internal or external hosting?
a.m...@sussex.ac.uk
At the University of Sussex, we are interested in finding out the level of technical support institutions give to their ePrints institutional repository and whether this is by library staff or IT servicesor or hosted by ePrints. It does seem to vary considerably from one institution to another. Having recently had a key member of repository staff move on to pastures new, we are curently re-evaluating our requiements and investigating the pros and cons of EPrints hosted versus hostsed by institution and everything in between.
I have a few questions I would like to ask, but any feedback would be useful:
* Where is your ePrints repository hosted (ePrints Services, ULCC, own institution)?
* Do you have dedicated technical support staff within the institutions - Library, IT services, other. Size of team?
* If hosted externally, do you continue to do some technical support in-house? Could you give examples of the type of technical support that you institution continues to provide.
* What are the pros and cons of internal / external hosted options?
If you would prefer to reply off list, I am happy to collate responses, anonomise institution names, and summarise back to the group.
Thank you for your time,
Kind regards,
Annette
John Salter
Hi Annette,
Here in Leeds, we have a Library Systems Team – who support many different systems within the Library – anything from Turnstiles to the LMS; Special-Collections humidity sensors to Gallery touchscreens.
Within this team we have two geeks who work the majority of their time on EPrints / repository related tasks. We’re both called John (don’t think this has any real bearing on things though).
We are based in the Library, but are seen by University IT as part of their team too – although our reporting lines go upwards within the Library.
We provide development / support for two White Rose (WR) repositories (a consortium of Leeds, Sheffield, York), and 3 Leeds-specific repositories: Digital Library; Research Data and an internal dark-archive.
Our servers are managed by our Central IT – the backups, storage etc. but we are responsible for the databases, EPrints application, and any other bits we need.
The repositories all have different needs, and these often require good understanding of other systems:
WR: connections to Symplectic, Pure, British Library (EThOS), Library catalogue harvesters (Primo, Summon).
Leeds: connections to our digitisation studio, KE Emu (Special Collections archival cataloguing system), Research Data services.
I believe the service that John and I offer is excellent – and being part of a Library systems team rather than a central IT team is an important aspect of this.
We can tailor what we deliver to our institutional / WR needs and have a very good understanding of both the local systems we need to know about, and national/international standards/services (e.g. ORCID).
We also have an excellent understanding of EPrints, and how aspects of our developments may be pushed back into the core of the software – and how resolving bugs we discover helps all of us (and OA generally) progress.
Within the WR consortium, different developments may have different priorities for the three institutions. These are discussed, and ordered appropriately on a monthly basis – which I think would be very difficult with an externally hosted system. We can implement things quickly and efficiently, but also incrementally when necessary.
I’ve had various discussions with people about what is/isn’t possible in EPrints. For self-hosted systems, these can often result in quick wins – but with hosted systems, they would have to go through some formal process – and be funded – which can stifle progress (but I suppose it depends on how deep your pockets are, and how busy your hosts are).
I hope that’s useful – if anyone from Leeds/Sheffield/York want to comment on/add to this, please do!
Cheers,
John
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Annette Moore
Technical Services Librarian
Library Building
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON
BN1 9QL
T: 01273 877046
E: a.m...@sussex.ac.uk
Sent: 25 August 2016 11:22
To: Annette Moore; EPrints UK User Group
Subject: RE: Technical Support for ePrints - internal or external hosting?