RePosit Skype conference call no. 2
25 November 2010, 10.30am–12.00pm

Present: Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Ellie James (Keele), Ian Tilsed (Exeter), Jill Evans (Exeter).

Apologies: Bo Middleton (Leeds), Jodie Double (Leeds), Richard Jones (Symplectic), Sarah Molloy (QMUL).

Chair: Lizzie Dipple

Minutes: Lizzie Dipple

Agenda
1. Plymouth advocacy plan

2. Keele advocacy plan

3. QMUL advocacy plan

4. Exeter advocacy plan

5. Leeds advocacy plan

6. AOB

1. Plymouth advocacy plan

NC – I was the first to draft up an advocacy plan and now having seen the others, I have a second task: to convert it to a to-do list of activities, adding in details and dates, as there is in the Leeds and Exeter plans.

LD – Yes, seeing all the plans together, that’s what I thought too.

EC – Re: dates, I probably won’t know until a week or two before they happen what the exact dates are, so is it OK to put in just the month instead of a date if I don’t know yet?

LD – Yes, approximate dates are fine.

EC – Right, I need to do that then on my plan.

NC – Yes, this will be same for me too. I have certain dates I know in advance for big committee meetings, but otherwise I’ll put in indicative dates. Dates are tricky to come by here because we’re in the early stages of the implementation and so until the technical situation is sorted out we just don’t know. Once that’s sorted I can put in more meaningful dates.

RP – It’s a case of horses for courses. Our plan is not just specific to the repository in terms of planning out the to-do list and actions and we’ve got a bedrock of agreement of who we want to target and roughly how we want to target them. It’s helpful to gather together the extra element of your resources in terms of what you can actually manage. Then you can plan with nailed-down timescales and hence avoid slippages. You can just use whatever tools suit you locally and methods you already use that work.

EC – I’m better when I have dates, to have something to work against.

NC – Me too - I need to put some dates in. Also dates are important for lead times, to get points on meeting agendas, etc.

IT – Lead times are very important, especially for Exeter at the moment, with the governance structure changing and so meeting agendas are huge.

NC – Yes, it’s the same here, as regards political change (with meetings postponed) especially when we’re trying to target big committees.

LD – There are two levels of advocacy plan: the overview general plan and then the details of an action plan. Plymouth and Keele are good overview plans, and just need some additional details for targets, deadlines, lead times.

NC – Yes, I completely agree.

EC – Will we have to go back and review the plans? To check against what we set out to do.

LD – As part of your normal working methods, you would want to review your activities against your own plans, but also as part of the RePosit project outputs we’ll be reviewing how the advocacy programme went as the project draws to an end, reporting on project conclusions. The plans are live, working plans, so if they need to be tweaked and worked on that’s important. That’s what you’re doing at White Rose, Rachel, isn’t it?.

RP – The Leeds plan is split in two. First: the relatively static, longer-term strategy, which the steering committee reviews once or twice a year. Second: the organic to-do list (communication plan), which inevitably changes and we review fortnightly at team meetings. This has fixed points that have to be met but changes around those points as required, for instance if if things aren’t going so well with one faculty or group and we want to change to another group that becomes keener - then you need to bump certain points up the list and prioritise them differently.

LD – That’s a good combination. The advocacy plans don’t necessarily have to be two separate documents. It depends on local requirements (at White Rose the three HEIs make things more complicated). Having two parts to the plan is good (one more static than the other). The Exeter plan is somewhat different in comparison because it is all the detail but without the overview overall strategy part.

IT – There is a broader discussion going on at the moment about institutional policy and strategy in Exeter driven by other groups. Once we see the outcomes and that strategy is drawn up it will become the umbrella.

RP – Did you want any specific input, Nicola? The Plymouth plan looks good.

NC – As I said in the previous Skype call, I’m just concerned that my plan has a lot about the repository on its own rather than being just about the integration tool, which Bo had talked about. But I was reassured by the discussions last time given that we’re at such an early stage. Reading the White Rose plan has made me think about the fact that there are lots of user groups I need to cover and only one of me, so should I focus on one subject group in particular? Does anyone have any views on a broad brush approach or targeting specific group(s)?

EJ – As people start showing an interest and enthusiasm I will focus on them and target them (and hopefully use them as an exemplar of real production data if I can to encourage other, less enthusiastic areas) but since Keele is a small university I will try to cover all groups.

LD – For different-sized universities there can be different approaches.

EJ – I would have though it would be completely different for Leeds.

RP – Yes, such a large institution is a nightmare of epic proportions, and you can never assume that any system is embedded. For example at the recent library reps meeting, only half the reps said that they were familiar with Symplectic (a system that’s been  in place for two years). Never assume something is in the consciousness even after someone has used the system. It’s vital to get the subject librarians on board and then you can scale out from there.

EJ – Yes, it was the same thing here with the original Symplectic roll out. You just have to keep saying it and saying it...

NC – I agree. My job is to make sure all the subject librarians are on board. Subject librarians can add value and they know the people. I will take a slow and steady approach, and use those schools who are showing an interest - to lead the way.

IT – Last night we upgraded to Symplectic Elements 3.6 at Exeter, so we can do a review of our existing contents and the RoMeo colours, with a breakdown by organisational unit. I asked Richard and he’s looking into this. That way we can know who to target parts of our advocacy at and possibly change our plan..

LD – That’s good. That would be a clear way to find out who to target. I know this is on Richard’s list of things he’s looking at. With finite resources you need to find exemplars, getting it embedded in one area and using champions (possibly whole departments/schools) as we discussed at the Exeter meeting.

IT – We have used the same couple of departments for all the Symplectic roll-outs and have built up a partnership with them. Build on what we already know and we’ll probably do the same again here.

LD – In the advocacy plans, the background context sections explaining the situation of each university are very important, particularly for JISC’s requirements that the project outputs be reusable and instructional for other HEIs (showing relevance to potential users, etc). The plans are not just for use by the partners – but as materials and guides for any other HEI going down the same path. Plymouth has great section on institutional context and buy-in, Keele is particularly good in terms of how systems are used at the moment.

NC – That’s a valid point. I will add a paragraph at the top of my plan giving the general information and context about Plymouth, rather than diving straight in with Plymouth-centric jargon..

EJ – I need to do that as well, and we have confusing structures at Keele.

RP – Could the context be given in a separate document? [Clarification - I had in a mind a cover sheet for the plan - a first page with preamble that can be used for external dissemination but ditched for internal - rather than 2 separate docs RP] [Yes, that sounds like a good idea LD]

LD – Yes, although in some ways it would be good to have everything in one place to avoid multiple documents needing to be read all together. However, the White Rose plan covering Leeds is obviously an already-existing working document, so I don’t want to hijack that if you don’t want to change and confuse with additional context. If it’s just not feasible, of course the info can be separate. By the way, these are not plans that other HEIs would literally just pick up and use, but more like exemplars of how a plan could look for an HEI in this situation.

LD – I had a couple of specific queries about the Plymouth plan. In the section for ‘all other staff/researchers’ who counts under this grouping? Is it librarians, researchers, anyone else or a mix? This is the section with some of the most detailed communication mechanisms you’ve given but has the least specific group name.

NC – I’ve spotted my mistake: that should say ‘all academic staff/researchers’.

LD – One other point I wondered about was how to measure the success criteria of ‘increased awareness’ outcome that features in lots of the plans. Increased deposits, increased number of depositors, amount of feedback are all quantifiable.

NC – That’s a good point, it’s not a very SMART objective.

LD – Well, we also have to be realistic too. But is there anything we can tie down?

EJ – Perhaps we could monitor the number of enquiries about the repository. Or would that be too difficult? That would show increased awareness and engagement. But the enquiries wouldn’t come just to one person.

LD – Maybe it’s impossible to give an absolute measure, but we need to keep track of it somehow. It’s something to think about. Does anyone from either Leeds or Exeter who has had experience of doing advocacy before have any suggestions?

RP – Could we build this a little bit into the RePosit survey somehow and target the survey at people who we know start out not knowing anything about it (if we can pinpoint them)? Although I think we’d want a representative cross-section of your academics as a broad spectrum of people for the survey. But to monitor increased awareness you want to measure over time to see the changes. We have previously based our evidence on anecdotal feedback (for instance in a big meeting if people don’t know what you’re talking about that’s a good indicator that awareness is low), not any absolute measure. It’s hard to capture in a formal way. Does anyone else have any other ideas?

IT – We did a huge amount of advocacy for the original Symplectic roll-out but we need to maintain the awareness. I was involved in Egtree yesterday for biosciences for a Research Council award and we had a stand about Symplectic and the repository link, but even staff from a department closely aligned with the roll-out of new modules weren’t really engaging with it. It’s difficult to know how to measure that.

LD – We could use the survey in some way to get a snapshot and get a slight handle on it. There isn’t a way beyond measuring at various time points, but at least we should be looking out for anecdotal evidence or thinking about individual mechanisms we can use (for instance at a meeting comparing a rough show of hands with the same question three months earlier).

NC – Yes, we will have to use a variety of methods. I’ll have a think and add something to my to-do plan where I can get some evidence and keep reminding myself.

LD – I don’t mean that in the next two minutes we need to come up with something exact, but just that we should be aware of our outputs.

RP – Again subject librarians (if available to you and on board) can be crucial because they are on the ground in their individual departments, talking to anybody and everybody. We can ask them to give us feedback on awareness and engagement, how the system is really being used. They are meeting with academics in lots of different forums, whereas we are in control of who and how we talk to people. Utilising them is to everybody’s benefit.

EJ – That’s a really good idea. I like that.

NC – Since I am a subject librarian, my team of subject librarians are definitely on board. Symplectic is now my middle name!

RP – Yes, I stole some parts of your plan from the perspective of subject librarians for Leeds and White Rose. It’s not something that I really know about.

NC – This is what’s so good about the project team: sharing the different strengths and experiences from across the project team.

LD – That's a major point of why RePosit is such a good idea. I’m very happy to hear that.

2. Keele advocacy plan

LD – As I said before, it’s interesting that the Keele plan’s context is from a very different perspective – it’s more about the use of current systems rather than institutional structure and perspective. Can I ask, what’s the source for your quote that 95% of repositories being empty?

EC – That’s a good question, I’ll have to try and remember.

RP – That sounds like a Stevan Harnad quote.

EC – I think I got that to scare the senior management team about repositories.

EC – Thank you to the Plymouth and the White Rose plans, which gave me a template to start with. I think about things from the research office perspective, and I struggle to understand the library, so I’ll need to fill that part of my plan in more. I have a meeting in a fortnight with the librarians, and then I will be able to add more in. The head of the Keele library is very keen.

LD – These documents are works in progress, and you have your library meeting and then plan updates on your to-do list, so that sounds fine.

EC – Can I ask the other equivalent HEIs, how much involvement or buy-in do you have from different areas, to make it a two-pronged attack?

NC – My project team is made up from staff from three areas: library, computing and research office, covering all angles.

IT – Yes, we’ve got something similar at Exeter with our project team and project board. We have representatives from knowledge transfer in the library, senior academics, the research office (although there’s a change of personnel there). Once we’ve got a draft we’ll consult with them.

RP – We’ve got something similar in Leeds, although more ad hoc in terms of meetings. We have fortnightly meetings with the research office and the IT staff who support the system, but that’s not specifically in terms of the roll-out alone. We would like a more coherent management structure for who owns Symplectic and who is doing what (like Exeter and Plymouth have).

NC – As we travel through different stages of our project, we’re realising we need to make changes to the make up of the project team. I wanted to have academic voices on the board, but I have really struggled to get academic input. Part of my role is to try and bring that in.

IT – We have academics on board, but with different levels of engagement. We’ve tried to get representatives from science, social sciences, arts and humanities and we’ve found they have varied discussions and experiences of Symplectic.

LD – Having a variety or system users on boards and teams good way of getting right perspectives and engagement.

EC – I want this to be seen as an institutional activity, not just research office activity, with help from librarians, so that it forms a key part of the academics’ daily routine. This is part of my job over the next few months.

LD – At the end of the Keele plan, like for White Rose, I liked that you had a tick list of methods and people, which is a very good quick way of seeing what the plan is about. JISC will like the external audiences section too.

EC – Can we list word of mouth as a mechanism? It’s a very important mechanism for communication but you can’t control it. However, that is very often how awareness-raising will happen.

LD – Yes, it is important and I think you can include it in your plan, even if you can’t schedule in specific tasks around it from the beginning. Although you can’t control it, you can assist the situations and environments in which it takes place.

RP – It would be brilliant to understand how mechanisms of word of mouth worked. For instance, then you could target the key one or two people who would pass on the information as gossip. I don’t know how you can understand your organisation in that depth, but if you could it would be such a powerful tool. You need a visual map of who’s connected to who, and then you can target the person in the middle at the ‘hub’.

EC – You do often know who is the centre of a gossip network.

LD – Perhaps then this is something to have at the back of our minds: who is the key work-related gossip hub?

3. QMUL advocacy plan

LD – I know Sarah isn’t able to join us in the call, but is there anything about QMUL’s uncompleted draft plan we should discuss whilst the rest of us are together? I wondered myself about the idea we had from the Exeter meeting of there being three scenarios that different HEIs can find themselves in: (i) ground zero, (ii) having established systems and (iii) somewhere in between. Although I thought QMUL was an example of the middle scenario, on reading the draft QMUL advocacy plan it sounded more and more like QMUL are closer to the situation that Keele and Plymouth are in. Does anyone have any thoughts about what the scenarios really are?

RP – Long-standing isn’t the same as established and embedded; there are multiple facets. On reading QMUL’s plan, it seems that the system is not yet embedded – and to some extent I’d apply this to White Rose too. The link with the research management system is an opportunity to re-launch our service (it’s an integral part of a centralised system) and review the nature of what we’re offering. We need to do more thinking about what the different scenarios are. An embedded repository with a new link to a central RMS is a different scenario, with different thought-processes, different negotiations, different marketing of the service. Let’s put some thought into those different starting points that other HEIs may be at when they look at our materials and our project.

IT – I echo Rachel’s view. At Exeter, Symplectic is embedded because of a mandatory requirement for academics to engage with it, but the institutional repository is not so well embedded here, and we are having a ‘relaunch’ with Repository Tools and RePosit.

NC – Needing a relaunch/repositioning/reinvigoration of the system is a third (middle) position. It’s also a common state of affairs because a system may be technically up and running, but that’s not the same as it being in use. Getting the advocacy and engagement can take a bit of time.

LD – That’s a good discussion, and we’re starting to draw the threads together coherently. We just want to present our materials to JISC in a way that is clear.

LD – I found it interesting the discussion of crawlers and harvesters as stakeholders in the QMUL plan, exposing the repository to the wider world.

EJ – Our IT people are keen on this, and it is very important, but I am trying to get them to concentrate on getting the main system link up and running first. They are looking at a front-end search engine and increasing visibility to Google searches.

LD – Clearly it was a key point at QMUL, and for Keele too, although getting things up and running comes first.

EJ – I will add this to the plan, although not as a top priority.

RP – Crawlers and harvesters are included in the White Rose plan but not in as much detail. They are key stakeholders and the more you understand about them the better. The thing is that you only ever hear from people when there’s a problem. Therefore making sure you inform the relevant services that are harvesting your data when you make a system change would help (although it can be difficult to track them all down) and then you might not have the problems of data suddenly not being harvested.

LD – So you should be aware of these and they should go into the plan, but not as the number one priority.

RP – This has made me think of something that isn’t in the advocacy plan: if we are exposing data through the library catalogue (as now in York), there are more people with whom you need to communicate any system changes.

LD – A general question I had about a number of the plans was about the engagement with the repository mentioned in all the plans. Do we mean engagement in terms of putting data into the repository, or also engagement in terms of extracting data from the repository, people using the repository?

EC – That’s really good.

LD – Knowing who gets data out helps you know who to inform of changes.

RP – I think that’s a good point, and perhaps we need to have a think and amend our plans accordingly.

EJ – We currently publish the data to individual staff web pages from Symplectic’s content management system but eventually we want to link from and publish from the repository. This is another good way of getting the information out there in the public domain. Is anyone else going to do this or thinking about it?

NC – That’s a good idea. We are going to start linking from Symplectic data to personal professional web pages.

EJ – Since we’ve done that, it has made people show a fresh interest in Symplectic and whether they’ve approved everything, and will therefore help with promoting the repository too.

NC – This is really useful to hear. We’re sorting out the technical behind-the-scenes stuff and so we can give this work a priority given your experience of it.

RP – Likewise, because it’s a bit of a bone of contention for us at Leeds. Some departments are using the API to pull data out of Symplectic to their publication pages, and if there is a link to the repository it will surface. N.B. We have decided to link to the abstract page of the full-text article not to the PDF of the article itself. There hasn’t been a consistent roll-out through the whole institution and so it’s good to hear the Keele experience of making people more interested in Symplectic and making sure the data is correct, which is what we hoped.

IT – All our staff profiles are driven from Symplectic at Exeter and there’s no other way for academics to keep their profiles up to date, which helps them to do the right thing.

RP – That’s excellent to hear, that the compulsory approach works. I have a question about quality control: is it primarily the authors themselves checking the data themselves or is there another layer of data quality checking done in the library?

IT – We’re currently considering this at the moment. There is an internal research monitoring life for the year and the various publications put forward for that are checked by the research and knowledge transfer division, For the full REF submission, the library get involved for quality assurance. We’re keen to see where the verification element for Symplectic goes before we decide how to progress that.

RP – It’s a big point for us.

EJ – I’m pushing for the academics to be responsible for what’s on their web pages and therefore for what’s in Symplectic. That’s how they’ll be judged on whether to be submitted for the REF or not.

IT – The staff web pages are public and the academics don’t want any potentially embarrassing mistakes out there, so they pay more attention. It’s a kind of academic vanity experience.

EJ – Yes definitely.

4. Exeter advocacy plan

LD – My initial view, as we’ve already said, is that there is a lot of fantastic detail in the Exeter plan. This would be even more useful to a.n.other HEI browsing the RePosit project outputs if it could be pulled together into an overall summary of the strands.

IT – There have been useful discussions of all the plans, and we’ll be expanding ours, especially once the overall institutional strategy decisions have been made. Embarrassingly our Exeter introduction doesn’t include a Symplectic background/history and also we need to pad it out in terms of the broad picture because there’s mostly the detail in our plan at the moment.

LD – It was fantastic to see all the detail in yours because all five plans have ended up being so different and therefore are helping everyone else’s plans to be fuller.

IT – We’ve taken lots of notes of additions and inserts still to come. It’s good to have had these discussions.

RP – The Exeter plan has a very helpful section about the idea of embedding awareness in existing training infrastructure. We need to work out exactly what’s being delivered and by whom, to piggyback on to the existing sessions and documents. It’s great that you have these specific examples of avenues that you can utilise.

LD – I agree. That’s a key point from the Exeter plan: the guide and schedule of what’s going on and being published. And of course you need to know the lead times not just for meetings, but for when these guides are produced, so you know when we need to put materials forward for inclusion.

IT – It has been an interesting exercise looking for duplications. Because Jill is fairly new she brings a objective viewpoint. Reviewing the training and seeing the overlap has given us some other benefits. We’re struggling with the governance and all the changes in that.

EJ – It’s very useful to think of training materials as well as talking to people and getting in their faces. I need the documentation to support that since I can‘t be everywhere at once.

IT – There are lessons learned from the last roll-out of phase 1 in 2009: we found the online documentation and online videos were very popular for people who couldn’t make it to sessions in person.

LD – We discussed your video training session in the last Skype call, Ian.

IT – It was amazing how that could reduce the difficulties for people attending meetings. I got very good feedback from it, for example from one academic who was on long-term sick leave, but still managed to completely engage with the process via the online materials. The main thing for us at the moment is tying up the governance, which is a moving thing and then we can pad out the strategy and context in the plan.

LD – It sounds like you know what you need and want to do to more completely finalise your advocacy plan. Also, I found the outline of the academic structure in your plan very good and easy to understand – which is great for dissemination purposes.

IT – Thank you to everyone for your work and feedback; we’ll be putting the lessons learned to good use in our plan.

5. Leeds advocacy plan

LD – Because people have the White Rose communication plan as a template or basis for their own plans, I think everyone is familiar with the original at least. In the Leeds detailed plan, I was interested to see a list of current priority groups, and to see them listed so specifically.

RP – We got a steer from the research board. The detailed plan has to be an organic document, and the priorities change as the situation changes. There’s been mixed reaction to having a university policy. Despite our repository being a long-standing one, we still need to establish it and so are running two pilots. We’ll be reporting back later in the year and hence the emphasis in the plan..

LD – It’s no surprise that Engineering is one of your pilot groups, but I did find it interesting that you are also targeting History, which is quite different.

RP – Engineering are great, but as a consequence of certain resistance we’ve needed to reflect the arts in feedback to the research board as well, since some people say the system doesn’t add anything for them. They often have different copyright concerns and the citations case is different to in the sciences. We’re currently building up contacts in the History department.

NC – I completely understand your need for those two groups. It would be interesting to hear how you tackle these two such distinctive and different academic areas – the particular strategies you use – and any reflections, experiences and feedback you have.

NC – I also found it interesting that you are looking to agree a name for the Symplectic publication database.

RP – This is a Leeds-specific discussion given that within White Rose there are three HEIs, two of which use Symplectic and one that uses Pure. Different variant names for the system are used in different cases but Symplectic is quite well-known; however, it is a company name and so some people think it’s not right. There is a hot ongoing debate about whether to consolidate the names into one around Symplectic or use a completely new one. A previous suggestion was TULIP, but that didn’t take off.

NC – We went through exactly the same thought processes when Plymouth first purchased Symplectic, so I’m interested to follow how this works at Leeds: whether you do refer to it as Symplectic or use a local name. At Plymouth we have to be careful because we run a shared service with Exeter and there are complexities there. Perhaps with time we’ll give it a name, since for instance we call the repository PEARL not DSpace.

LD – Having a unified consistent name helps understanding and embedding, but changing a name people already understand can have its own difficulties.

RP – Yes, that’s the nub of the argument.

EJ – Name differences could cause problems with advocacy, in terms of the literature and materials, if there are different names.

RP – You’re quite right and we have agreed to make a decision fairly quickly, but it’s not clear exactly who makes the decision or which way it will go.

EJ – I sympathise.

LD – Will the RePosit training session(s) be going into the detailed Leeds plan? Four are mentioned in Exeter’s advocacy plan. Are you still working out the dates? What’s your thinking on these?

RP – We’re feeling like we’re a bit behind on the project work, and we’ll be adding these in as we work more on the plans. Of course the advocacy plans don’t just have RePosit activities in them.

LD – You could also add the survey into the plans, which we said could help with getting feedback on how the advocacy is going down, depending on how we do the survey.

RP – Yes.

RP – Does anyone know of any fancy software or have any good ideas on how best to capture key dates, lead times, etc but with changing priorities. Is there a good mechanism to do this? Jodie has been looking at a visual way to record the data, e.g. on a timeline.

EJ – It would be very interesting if Jodie can share the results of her research. I couldn’t think of a more exciting mechanism than a spreadsheet.

LD – I’ll have a think, and we should share any good ideas we have.

RP – Thank you.

LD – The section in the plan for new starters is great, pointing out that you’re capitalising on their keenness and so on. We might all think these are obvious points but writing them down so clearly means they won’t get missed.

RP – Thanks, but there’s more we can do and it’s a bit ad hoc at the moment. The key is finding when to target them because they are bombarded with information when they first join. We want to get them at the optimal point. They are usually keen before any jaded attitudes set in.

NC – New researchers sometimes come in from a university that has a repository, link, etc and so they want to carry on using that system. It’s like institutional comparisons: ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

6. AOB

NC – On a separate topic, regarding dissemination and Rachel’s email about a workshop at the RSP Winter School in February, I have early indications that I can hopefully book on to that. So perhaps we could give a joint presentation there as part of the RePosit dissemination opportunities.

RP – There is a free place and travel expenses paid for one person presenting the case study. Jodie also might be going, so we just need to do a bit of coordination about who is the lead person and who gets the free place. We are all equally involved in the project so I wanted to flag this up and ask if anyone had any strong feelings about it.

EJ – No thanks, that’s not my cup of tea.

NC – Part of the reason my managers are positive towards it is that I explained there could be a dissemination opportunity. I’m quite happy to work with Rachel or with Leeds.

RP – I’ll forward on the information from RSP about the format of the case study and we can discuss between ourselves and Jodie.

LD – That sounds like a good plan. Jodie and Rachel, it sounds like you’re in the loop anyway, and Nicola is keen and has backing, so I’ll just make sure the others who aren’t in the call now know they can be involved by contacting Rachel directly.

NC – If two people are going from Leeds, maybe the free place could be for one of them.

RP – We can negotiate how we do it: what/when/who.

LD – Does anyone have any other final additional points about the plans or any AOB?

NC – I need to add lots to the Plymouth plan from these notes, so what is the formal deadline for finishing the strategy overview advocacy plans?

LD – How about adding on one week to the previous deadline of the end of November? You need to time to get the plans right, but we also need to keep moving with the project.

NC – That would be fine for me.

EJ – That’s fine..

RP – Yes, likewise. Certainly a week would help us. I’d like to express the project guilt that we’re feeling at Leeds, at not having been able to commit as much time as we have wanted to RePosit in recent weeks. And what’s the deadline for getting feedback to Richard for the materials he’s been producing?

LD – Well, Richard has been working to the end of November as a deadline for the slides and so on.

EJ – I think Richard has been working on the slides this morning because I’ve had some emails from him today about materials.

NC – Yes, he’s tidied up the slides and incorporated my feedback and comments and all the images are in place today. I thought I’d better add the librarian’s perspective and story.

RP – This morning I uploaded the previous advocacy materials from Imperial College to Google docs for us to look at, some short guides they produced.

EJ – Thanks, they look interesting.

LD – I’ll be following up with Sarah about her meeting with QMUL Creative Services regarding our own materials development. I’ll also organise another Skype call before Christmas.

NC – I’m concerned that we need to fine-tune the details of the Leeds project meeting before the Christmas holidays, for instance inviting the academics for the right time in the meeting (and they may take a longer Christmas break) and fleshing-out the ideas for the pilot. Getting the accommodation booking through made me think of this.

RP – We’ll crack on with it. We’ve got one or two academics in mind, and I know we need to give them a close briefing beforehand (as discussed in the last Skype call). Is it OK to invite along a couple of administrators too, who work with Symplectic, for a different perspective?

NC – Yes, I’m entirely happy with anyone.

EJ – That sounds good.

LD – Nicola’s made a good point about making sure we know what we’re doing about Leeds before the Christmas holidays. I’ll make that one of my priorities.

NC – There’s a specific question about the timing of the session I’ll be giving. Should we say last thing on Thursday or first thing on Friday? We need to tie in with when the academics can make it.

LD – We need to liaise with Leeds on this.

RP – Friday morning sounds good, but we have staff training on Friday mornings. I’ll check with Bo regarding the venue and timing.

LD – Thank you to everyone.

ACTIONS:

ACTION: LD to organise further Skype call before Christmas – asap

ACTION: LD to follow-up with SM regarding QMUL Creative Services meeting – asap 

ACTION: LD to inform everyone of possible free place at RSP Winter School – 30th Nov

ACTION: RP to liaise with NC and anyone else interested in presenting at RSP Winter School – when is the deadline?

ACTION: All to send RJ final feedback on his materials – 30th Nov

ACTION: All to try to think of good mechanism for capturing key dates, lead times, changing priorities in a visual way and feed to Jodie – 3rd Dec

ACTION: JD to feed back results of her research into mechanisms – 3rd Dec

ACTION: All HEIs to finish advocacy plans, including context, background, overall strategy and detailed steps – 7th Dec

ACTION: RP/BM/JD to confirm details of Leeds project meeting venue, timings and inviting academics/administrators – 14th Dec?

ACTION: NC/IT to provide requirements for their presentations – 21st Dec?

ACTION: LD to work with everyone to prepare for Leeds meeting – 14th Jan