A visit to the Digital Repository Federation in Japan « Repositories Support Project

"...the Digital Repository Federation (DRF) in Japan... is a federation of universities and research institutions which have established institutional repositories. I met with them to share information about the work of the [Repositories Support Project, UK] RSP and the DRF. The meeting involved presentations about our work, in particular the events we run for repository staff. I was struck by the similarities... In Japan and the UK, persuading authors to deposit in the repository is a big issue and support and training in advocacy work features on the DRF and RSP programmes. And librarians often deposit on behalf of authors in Japan...the DRF... has 127 members and there is no charge to participate. You’ll see similarities with UKCoRR here (United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories). It receives funding from the National Institute of Informatics to provide training. They run events all over Japan for library staff and have held two international conferences... I went into some detail about the events we run, sharing some examples such as the activities on the Communication Skills for Advocacy workshop (see my presentation and notes). I also discovered some interesting techniques used in training by the DRF which I’m going to explore further for use in the UK. The DRF has produced a really good report into its activities “Hita-hita: institutional OA advocacy in Japan” which is well worth reading.”