I spent a little time yesterday brushing up on good blogging techniques and one of the lessons I’ve been reminded of is to keep the titles of posts relevant. I think this one is up to scratch. So welcome to BioMed Central‘s Open Repository blog. It’s good to get started on the right foot.

I recently had a conversation with someone about why we would need a blog for Open Repository (and from now on I’m going to use the shorthand of OR). OR is a strange beast.  It is it’s own project that is also bound to developments in the DSpace software community, both of which are tied in to ongoing changes within the field of institutional repositories. There’s a lot going on.

Over time I’ve been asked about various levels of communication with respect to the three areas listed above. We could have set up various email lists for different information strands. But emails require a formality that doesn’t necessarily always lend itself to the intended message. Nor do they particularly lend themselves to group discussion.

This blog should become our central point of information, not only about ongoing project developments but also issues of wider interest, some of which will affect the project, others that may just be of interest to repository managers and the repositories community. Reading of all posts is not mandatory; comments are encouraged, especially if they become conversations. 

Urgent announcements will of course still be sent out by email, but in the meantime, set up your RSS feeds and let us know what you think.