The Health Services in Ireland deliver thousands of different health and social services in hospitals and communities across the country, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In November they ran a well attended one day seminar at the Health Services Executive (HSE)  Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, to explore research taking place in the Irish health sector. It also included presentations from practitioners, policy makers and librarians.

The aims of the seminar were to:

Raise awareness of research in health that takes place outside of the academic setting.
Foster collaboration between the academic and broader health sector.
Promote existing Irish health research.
Profile the role of librarians in facilitating and supporting researchers.

Back in 2008, the HSE partnered with Open …

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Open Repository recently sponsored the biennial SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2010 in Baltimore. A scenic harbor side location provided a pleasant backdrop for an interesting international gathering of repository professionals.

In addition to an interesting keynote by Michael Nielsen, quantum computation pioneer, there were sessions on open data, global repositories networks, the financial stability of archives and repository-based publishing services: strategies for success (or failure). The latter highlighted several initiatives of self-publishing, but might have been good to be balanced by a publisher’s point of view.

A very good summary of the event is available from David Rapp of LibraryJournal.com, in his article ‘Open Data, Open Minds Highlight SPARC Digital Repository Meeting’.

Innovation Fair

A highlight of the conference were …

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Open Repository is pleased to be a sponsor at the 2010 SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting, which is taking place on November 8-9, 2010 at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore, U.S.A.

The North American SPARC meeting is a unique forum for diverse stakeholders, including librarians, technologists and research producers, to come together and consider how best to leverage the practices and policies that have proven successful in advancing repositories to date, as well as explore new challenges.

The event will feature an international selection of speakers, who will discuss:

Repository-based publishing services: Strategies for success (or failure)
Open data
Global repository networks
Making the case for financial sustainability

There will also be an Innovation Fair where participants will present, in …

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Well yet another fantastic conference took place at IFLA 2010 with the theme being ‘Open access to knowledge: promoting sustainable progress’. Open Repository just had to attend and of course, Gothenburg is a beautiful city to host the event as well!

The theme for the event was centered on the following:

Free access to knowledge, as important as freedom of speech
Accessibility for all, including the visually impaired and others with reading difficulties
Open and inclusive, no matter who you are or where you come from
Public domain, a place on the net or in a physical space, where people contribute and socially share content produced and owned as a public service
Open for ideas with user driven innovation, …

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