Kultivating Kultur: Increasing Arts Research Deposit | Ariadne: Web Magazine for Information Professionals

Use the link above to access the full text article from the current issue of Ariadne: Web Magazine for Information Professionals. The article opens as follows: “Funded by the Deposit strand [1] JISC Information Environment programme and led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), a Research Centre of the University for the Creative Arts, Kultivate will increase arts research deposit in UK institutional repositories. Through community engagement with the Kultur II Group [2] and technical enhancements to EPrints, Kultivate is sharing and supporting the application of best practice in the development of institutional repositories that are appropriate to the specific needs and behaviours of creative and visual arts researchers. The Kultur II Group consists of participants of the Kultur JISCMail list, a closed email list set up during the JISC-funded Kultur Project (2007-09), and participants at the meetings held after the end of the Kultur Project from 1 October 2009 to September 2011. The Kultur Project established institutional research repositories at the University of the Arts London and the University for the Creative Arts which were more appropriate for arts researchers, and which were visually enhanced to display multimedia outputs [3]. The Kultur II Group is open to all specialist creative arts institutions, departments within larger multidisciplinary institutions, and researchers in the UK; members include repository managers and administrators, researchers, librarians, technical staff, academics, and research office staff. This article presents an overview of the current arts research repository landscape in the UK. Data has been gathered through a literature review investigating current and recent JISC-funded projects and other initiatives, focusing primarily on the UK research repository community. Qualitative and quantitative data have also been acquired through the Kultur II Group and the wider repository community through two surveys: Kultivate Events Feedback, completed by delegates to the four community-led workshops and conference; and an Advocacy for arts research survey [4] that was sent to the UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR) and Kultur II Group JISCMail lists. Each workshop has included open and frank discussion which has been recorded in detailed minutes, quoted in this article as anonymised anecdotal evidence. In addition, a simple matrix was employed in gathering data from four one-hour recorded interviews...”