Good Practice Guidelines For Repository Owners: March 2008

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Development of Good Practice
Guidelines for Repository Owners
Authors of this report
Andrew Charlesworth University of Bristol
Nicky Ferguson Clax Ltd.
David Massart
European Schoolnet
Frans Van Assche
Jon Mason
InterCog Pty Ltd
Allyn Radford
Neil Smith
Knowledge Integration Ltd.
Rob Tice
Mike Collett Schemeta
Seb Schmoller schmoller.net
Contact: Nicky Ferguson, repoguides@therightplace.net
Reading this report
This report is written for Becta and the community it supports.

Any URLs (websites) quoted herein were last accessed on or before 14 February 2008.
To avoid excessive footnotes and references, we refer to our primary sources thus: {27}.
A numbered list of these primary sources appears in section 10. Where a section author
feels that it is important to the reader to know of the source or service without referring to
section 10 then the titles or URLs are mentioned in the text.
What is a repository?
Almost any computer which stores information and which is open to searching or browsing by
another computer can act as a repository. This report identifies three primary functions
associated with digital repositories as depositing, storing and accessing digital content.
For the purposes of this report, when we refer to repositories we mean learning resource
repositories. Learning resource repositories are computer systems used to store and manage
collections of learning resources and/or the metadata describing such objects. They usually
provide interfaces which allow content to be both input and output. Some include more
advanced features such as the addition of comments/reviews, metadata enhancement and
end user functions such as creating personal collections.
Good Practice Guidelines for Repository Owners page 1

Contents
1 General introduction................................................................................................................ 4
1.1 The report................................................................................................................. 4
1.2 Repositories in context............................................................................................. 4
1.3 Background .............................................................................................................. 5
2 Standards and specifications .................................................................................................. 7
2.1 Overview .................................................................................................................. 7
2.2 Introduction............................................................................................................... 7
2.3 Issues ....................................................................................................................... 7
2.4 Exemplars ................................................................................................................ 9
2.5 Detailed guidance................................................................................................... 10
2.6 References ............................................................................................................. 13
3 Sharing mechanisms ............................................................................................................ 14
3.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 14
3.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 14
3.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 15
3.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 18
3.6 References ............................................................................................................. 24
4 Marketing to users ................................................................................................................ 25
4.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 25
4.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 25
4.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 25
4.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 27
5 User interface........................................................................................................................ 30
5.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 30
5.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 30
5.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 31
5.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 32
6 E-safety ................................................................................................................................. 36
6.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 36
6.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 36
6.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 37
6.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 38
7 Accessibility........................................................................................................................... 40
7.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 40
7.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 40
7.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 41
7.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 41
7.6 References, standards, specifications and guidelines ........................................... 43
8 Quality ................................................................................................................................... 44
8.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 44

8.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 44
8.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 44
8.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 45
8.6 References ............................................................................................................. 50
9 IPRs and copyright................................................................................................................ 51
9.1 Overview ................................................................................................................ 51
9.2 Introduction............................................................................................................. 51
9.3 Issues ..................................................................................................................... 53
9.4 Exemplars .............................................................................................................. 56
9.6 References ............................................................................................................. 65
9.7 Appendix A: Use of licence condition icons ........................................................... 68
9.8 Appendix B: Different licence schemes.................................................................. 69
9.9 Appendix C: AEShare licensing model (simple example)...................................... 71
10 Primary sources .................................................................................................................... 72
11 Secondary sources ............................................................................................................... 75

1 General introduction
1.1 The report
This report, commissioned by Becta and undertaken by a team from Europe and Australia,
surveys issues raised by current work on repositories for learning materials and makes
recommendations for guidelines across eight areas:
Standards and specifications
Sharing mechanisms
Marketing to users
User interface
E-safety
Accessibility
Quality
IPRs and copyright.
The team surveyed 70 primary sources, including internal documents supplied by Becta, key
published documents and web-based resources including several learning repositories. The
team also scanned many secondary sources, synthesising findings and adding comments both
from their own experience and from networking with other interested parties, including
repository owners. Each section of the report identifies issues and, where possible, exemplars
before going on to specify guidelines. The guidelines and exemplars have been prepared in
such a way that Becta could use them in isolation from the other parts of the report.
1.2 Repositories in context
Figure 1 Repositories in the wider information environment

The diagram in Figure 1 shows five possible logical stages of digital content in a service-
oriented architecture. It is important to note that not all stages will always be required for an
end user to gain access to a resource (for example, an end user may access exposed
services without the mediation of federated services). Also services within the same level
may interact with each other (for example, a web crawler may access the outputs of a
search service).
The definition of a 'repository' in the context of this report is necessarily broad in order to
account for the breadth of user communities included as part of Becta's target audience for
the repository guidelines. Although the definition can potentially include any collection of
learning resources made available for the use of others in the Becta communities, it is
unlikely that the guidelines in this report could be implemented without relying on some form
of repository application or, at least, a referatory-style database. It is recommended,
therefore, that any collection to be exposed to the Becta communities be managed directly
or indirectly by a repository or referatory application intended for such tasks.
Similarly, it is very unlikely that reuse will be effectively enabled without a content strategy
that is relevant to the target communities. In order to support content reuse by both adoption
(using the content as it exists with no alteration) and adaptation (where users are allowed
and supported in the ability to modify content according to the licences that apply) then it is
necessary to develop a content strategy for the development, maintenance, storage,
management and exposure of the repository's content to the community it serves. The
content strategy should incorporate all aspects of the intrinsic relationship between content,
process/practice and infrastructure (see Figure 2 below), in order to ensure the greatest
likelihood that reuse objectives will be supported.
Figure 2. The intrinsic relationship
1.3 Background
It is widely held that
repositories help people share digital resources, so, where this is an aim, repositories
are a solution. {41}
Yet from this and other work we have done {22} a picture emerges of relatively little formal,
large-scale sharing use of repositories with appropriate licensing for sharing. Instead, we see
a lot of informal, small-scale sharing with colleagues and collaborators, especially within

single institutions. It might be argued that this serves education well and that under the cover
of confusion about ownership and legal issues, enough sharing is going on to ‘oil the wheels’
of learning. We believe that this argument is not sustainable for two main reasons. First, we
believe that large-scale formal and informal sharing is needed to improve the quality and
cost effectiveness of teaching within and between institutions. Currently one way to enable
this appears to be the development of a distributed network of repositories with suitably
flexible and usable sharing mechanisms and proper easy to understand licensing, where
applicable. This would require good management and wider user awareness of both the
mechanisms and the licensing issues. Second, as we move into an era where the majority of
teaching resources are born digital and stored digitally, and with the increase in the use of
services (such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr etc.) for publication/upload as well as
consumption/download, people who previously sent individual emails to colleagues, or
shared ‘stuff’ via CDs or memory sticks, will be increasingly tempted to share more widely,
perhaps without appreciating the legal implications or possible outcomes.
So we can conclude that developing the right technologies for storing and sharing digital
learning resources (DLRs) is a necessity, and we address many of the issues this raises
below. But putting technical solutions in place will not on its own encourage or stimulate the
kind of large-scale sharing which Becta might regard as desirable. It is unlikely to happen
without institutional commitment to change cultural and organisational practices, far more
widespread knowledge and clarity about the issues amongst users, depositors and institution
senior management, and recognition by service providers of user requirements. These
issues are often underpinned by concerns, uncertainties and misconceptions about copyright
law, ownership and IPR (intellectual property rights), so steps need to be taken to address
these concerns and to clarify and simplify IPR issues across the sector.
Many people would like to share certain resources only with small groups or to restrict
access to their materials. Underlying this are insecurities about quality and attribution issues
and uncertainties or fears about IPR and ownership. Copyright is a not a system designed to
address these concerns. Perhaps exacerbated by these concerns and uncertainties, there
also appears to be a gradual erosion of the fabric of trust within education. Instances are
widely discussed (if not actually widespread) of staff leaving institutions, removing and taking
‘their’ resources with them, or conversely of institutions forbidding staff, when they move on,
to use resources that they have themselves created.
In this report, we have produced specific guidelines which are relevant to both current and
potential repository owners. However, it is clear to us that there are broader issues which
need to be tackled in order to allow repositories to ‘solve’ the ever-present silo problems that
impede organisations and sectors and to ensure that money invested in them results in
improved quality, consistency and efficiency in education. These issues include:
researching the organisational and cultural contexts in which sharing is likely to be
feasible and beneficial and making a clear expression and exemplar implementation of
an organisational commitment to sharing at an institutional and a sectoral level;
looking at the roles played by repositories and the potential for incentive, reputation,
attribution, acknowledgment, approbation, reviews and trust, and developing the
technical tools to support them through the automation of creating, attaching and using
appropriate metadata together with administrative, access, rights and preservation
metadata;

making available tools and systems which facilitate restricted sharing within ad hoc
small groups who share common interests;
specifying, promoting and using one or a limited number of open content type
licences or developing a new or endorsing an existing ‘Learning Commons’ licence,
emphasising attribution, specifically for institutions to share learning resources, taking
into account the likely impact on authors’ motivation to embrace sharing;
promoting such licences as a way of making sharing easy, with online support and
explanation of their implications;
encouraging staff training and development to address the uncertainties and
concerns expressed.
2 Standards and specifications

2.1 Overview
Standards and specifications are important to maximise the potential for interoperability and
because they detail best practices that are relevant to almost all the aspects of repository
operations. This chapter reviews the main issues related to the use of specifications and
standards for repositories elicited in the reviewed literature (section 2.3), proposes examples
of good practice for successfully dealing with these issues (section 2.4) and concludes by
providing detailed guidance (section 2.5).
We address the following three questions:
1. Why does a repository need to support standards and specifications and which ones
to adopt?
2. How are specifications and standards applied to build an interoperable repository?
3. How are standards-compliant metadata and vocabularies created and maintained?
2.2 Introduction
Repositories do not operate in isolation. They are typically a component within a broader
infrastructure and can potentially interconnect and interoperate with other services such as
virtual learning environments, authoring tools, content aggregators, registries, metadata
generators and educational portals. Excellent repositories exist that provide good collections
of high-quality learning resources and a successful user experience. While it is doubtful that
a single source could provide all the necessary learning resources that a teacher or learner
might require, most users prefer to get access to all the resources they need via a unique
access point. Therefore, they should be able to transparently search multiple information
sources from within their favourite learning portal or virtual learning environment rather than
having to visit several repositories providing different and unfamiliar environments and end-
user experiences. The use of standards and specifications is key to supporting this kind of
scenario.
2.3 Issues
There are many examples of problems being experienced by both repository owners and
teachers which result from the absence of common standards and specifications. They
include general issues such as the lack of agreed specifications to solve problems,

methodological issues and more specific issues related to the use of metadata and
vocabularies, content and how to expose it.
General issues:
• Existing standards and specifications are insufficiently used;
• In some areas, no agreed specifications exist.
Methodological issues:
• A fragmented approach to funding, particularly in the cultural sector, means that
there is no consistency of approach;
• The standards and specifications adopted by repositories are not always appropriate
for use with particular groups of suppliers and users;
• Specifications for describing digital and physical learning materials are not always
aligned and compatible;
• Backward compatibility problems exist between different versions of some
specifications.
Metadata-related issues:
• There is a need for the use of persistent identifiers;
• It is currently unclear whether there is a requirement for resolver services, such as
those based on OpenURL, within the UK school sector;
• DC-based profiles are sometimes more appropriate for tagging individual assets than
IEEE LOM;
• Teachers and other creators of digital learning resources are often poor at creating
formal metadata;
• The use of information professionals to produce metadata is expensive;
• Content providers often provide insufficient metadata;
• Application profiles of standards and specifications are often required to ensure
interoperability, particularly in a Web 2.0 environment;
• The mechanism for storing ‘rights’ information within IEEE LOM is too limited;
• There are numerous (some would say ‘too many’) metadata standards, each being
based on different conceptual assumptions which makes their harmonisation non-
trivial.
Vocabulary-related issues:
• Much metadata displays incoherence in terminology and an absence of controlled
vocabularies;
• Where controlled vocabularies are used, they are often insufficient or inappropriate;
• A strategy is required for avoiding the need to re-tag content when specifications
change;
• The relationship between controlled vocabularies and folksonomies is unclear;
• Maintaining controlled vocabularies is problematic;
• There is a lack of tools to automate the bulk updates and changes to vocabularies;
• There is a need for a simple common vocabulary for describing genres/types of
resource.
Content-related issues:
• Content often does not conform to the required technical standards;
• It is difficult for users (i.e., teachers, faculty) to create standards-compliant content.

Exposing content:
• Syndication mechanisms such as RSS and Atom are not used to any great extent;
• Backward compatibility problems exist between RSS 2.0 and earlier versions;
• There is no accepted standard for publication/deposit of materials into a repository;
• Some repositories do not allow search engines to index their content;
• There is no agreement on a common CQL context set to facilitate the use of
SRW/SRU with IEEE LOM metadata;
• Methods of exposing content need to integrate with, or at least be aware of,
authentication and authorisation services as used by the UK Access Management
Federation.
2.4 Exemplars
1. The LRE (http://lre.eun.org) developed in the framework of the Calibrate {23} and Melt
{29}
projects provides several examples of best practice:
• The LRE Metadata Application Profile is a profile of LOM that comes with:
o internationalised controlled vocabularies (each vocabulary term = token +
translation in multiple languages) that facilitate the automatic translation of the
metadata. These vocabularies include a multilingual thesaurus for the
European school domain.
o An XML binding
o Tools for tagging resources, compliance testing and automatic metadata
translation.
• The LRE offers to repositories several ways to expose their content to the LRE users:
Federated searching with SQI, harvesting with OAI-PMH, and batch-upload of
metadata.
2. One major achievement of Curriculum OnLine {7} has been to help move forward the
technical state of play regarding learning content repositories. It has demonstrated
that running a large-scale content repository for the school sector is perfectly
feasible, and significant operational lessons have been learned. These include:
• A large number of suppliers are able to provide metadata conforming to the
COL specification (which is a profile of IEEE LOM), with support from the
COL tagging tool;
• The metadata provided allowed an effective and consistent user experience
in searching and browsing the repository; and
• It has clarified some key operational processes for managing a repository. .
3. The e-Framework is a good example of a Service Oriented Approach. {12}
4. In the open source world, FEDORA (http://www.fedora.info/ ), SCAM
(http://scam.sourceforge.net/), DSpace (http://www.dspace.org/ ) and MINOR
(http://minor.sourceforge.net/) are all examples of repository software designed to be
interoperable through support for harvesting and/or open search protocols.
5. ARIADNE, CORDRA and LRE are examples of good practice in the use of unique
identifiers to provide persistence in a federated environment.
6. LORN in Australia, in collaboration with E-standards for Training (http://e-
standards.flexiblelearning.net.au/), works with repository owners to continually

improve the technical quality of the content in order to achieve standards
conformance. Over time, this has led to improvements in searchability and usability.
7. edna (http://www.edna.edu.au/) provides several examples of best practices:
• A metadata application profile of Dublin Core
(http://www.edna.edu.au/metadata) with several controlled vocabularies
(http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/view.php?id=1132&topic=2)
• Extensive use of RSS 2.0 throughout edna services
www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/resources/toolkit/rss_services
8. MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) objects are available both as MIT OCW Common
Data Interchange Format (CDIF), which is a format compliant with IMS Content
Packaging, and as flat HTML. {54} The MIT OCW metadata implementation has
adopted the use of the IEEE LOM standard for capturing descriptive, technical and
rights metadata. Further rights metadata has been captured in a Filemaker Pro
database. Additional operational and administrative metadata has been captured in
the content management system used to create and publish the MIT OCW website. It
is recommended that OCW implementers adopt the IEEE LOM metadata standard. It
is flexible and can be extended to accomplish a wide range of metadata
requirements. It is also recommended that OCW implementers take advantage of the
flexibility of LOM to incorporate controlled vocabularies for describing the subject,
genre and format of learning objects. The taxonomic work of institutions such as the
Library of Congress, IEEE and the National Center for Educational Statistics was
employed in the creation of metadata for MIT OCW objects. Individual
implementations may require institution- or context-specific vocabularies, such as the
National Library of Medicine’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).
9. The RUBRIC toolkit {55} is aimed at streamlining the approach taken by Australian
and New Zealand universities in building their research capability through
implementing institutional repositories. While developed specifically for the university
sector, it provides useful guidelines under the following headings:
- Potential Repository Functions
- Planning
- System Options
- Establishing a Pilot Repository
- Publicity and Marketing
- Populating the Repository
- Managing a Repository
- Digital Preservation Management
- Data Management
- Metadata
- Access Management
- Pilot to Production
2.5 Detailed guidance

Figure 3 provides an overview of the guidelines provided in this section. They can be
classified into five broad categories:
• General guidelines on the use of standards and specifications: Why use standards
and which ones to adopt?

• Methodological guidelines: How to apply specifications and standards to build
interoperability.
• Content: Specifications for reusable content.
• Metadata: Standards, creation, vocabularies, and maintenance.
• Exposing content: Making content discoverable.
Figure 3 Guidelines overview
2.5.1 Use standards and specifications

Even for an ‘isolated’ repository (i.e., a repository that does not have to interact with other
systems) there are advantages in using existing standards and specifications rather than
developing ad hoc solutions. Standards and specifications are not only a key means of
achieving interoperability. They generally consist of solutions to common problems based on
established best practices. As such, one of the benefits of standards and specifications is to
lower the barriers to trying something different. For example, adopting the IEEE Learning
Object Metadata (LOM) standard to describe learning resources will certainly lead to a better
and more cost-effective solution than creating a new metadata scheme from scratch, even if the
standard is not used as provided and needs to be profiled to match all the requirements of a
repository.
2.5.2 Know your environment

There are often numerous standards to choose from. For example, LOM, Dublin Core (DC),
and MARC propose three different ways to describe the resources stored in a repository.
Knowing your environment is a key factor when deciding which of the different standards
and specifications to support. What is the community that the repository serves? And with
whom does it need to interoperate? How will users search and discover the content they
wish to reuse and what search terms are they likely to use? To continue our metadata
example, a cultural heritage repository will typically be supported by DC, a learning object
repository by LOM and a library repository by MARC, whilst a repository interoperating with
these three communities might choose to support all of them.
2.5.3 Use standards and specifications in a consistent way

Once the community served by a repository and its requirements in terms of interoperability are
clearly identified, it becomes easier not only to choose between different standards but also to
combine complementary specifications in a consistent way. This is especially important for
repositories developed in several stages with different sources of funding which, experience
shows, create a risk of adopting solutions that might prove difficult to integrate.
2.5.4 Use an incremental approach

Making a repository interoperable can be costly in time and resource. Fortunately,
interoperability is generally not all-or-nothing. The interoperability of a repository can be

improved gradually by progressively and consistently adding support for new standards and
specifications.
2.5.5 Adopt a service-oriented approach

Repositories can be developed as a suite of services that can be integrated in service
oriented approaches, such as the one proposed by the e-Framework.
Figure 4 – the repository at the centre of a service oriented approach

Figure 4 suggests some of the potential benefits of such an architecture that allows content
(and/or its metadata) produced in an authoring tool (1) to be input (2) to a repository (3) via a
publishing interface (INPUT). This content can then be output via an exposure interface
(OUTPUT) which can be used directly by end users or by another content discovery service
such as an educational portal.
2.5.6 Adopt common application profiles within your community of use

Standards may enable interoperability but quite often are not interoperable one with the
other. Profiling a metadata specification consists of adapting it to the needs of a community
of users. However, modifying a specification can potentially lead to incompatibilities with
other profiles based on the same original specification. When changes such as proprietary
extensions, changes of vocabularies, etc. cannot be avoided, it is recommended that they
are documented along with rules to map the profile to the base specification.
When supporting multiple standards, it is important to make sure that they can be combined
smoothly. For example, LOM and DC metadata are not harmonised easily and if both have
to be supported it might be useful to define a metadata profile that can be bound to both
metadata formats. The Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW)
project did precisely this while also accommodating a number of other metadata schemas
(see http://www.arrow.edu.au/ ).
2.5.7 Utilise conformance checking and maintenance tools

Effective interoperability requires that each specification is correctly supported. The
availability of conformance testing tools is an important element to ensure the compliance of
repositories to a standard and must be taken into account when selecting standards.
Standards and specifications evolve. New features appear and old ones become
deprecated. Tools, such as those produced by the EU Telcert project (see
http://www.opengroup.org/telcert/tools-tutorial.htm), are essential to efficiently keep content
and metadata conformant to the current version of a standard.
2.5.8 Ensure that content is packaged appropriately

In order to guarantee the broadest reusability, as much content as possible should be
presented in formats that can be directly rendered by web browsers and/or common web

browser plug-ins. Packaging formats such as SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference
Model) Content Aggregation or IMS Content Packaging should be reserved for complex
content that requires packaging for easier delivery and reuse in virtual learning
environments. The most appropriate format to use will depend on the needs of your user
community and may depend on the capabilities of the learning platforms in use.
2.5.9 Expose content using standards based interfaces

In general, the more mechanisms a repository uses for exposing content, the more likely it is
that its content will be discoverable. However, implementing multiple interfaces is costly and
repository owners need to balance the advantages of providing multiple interfaces with those
of concentrating on implementing the most important interfaces well. Since the majority of
users use internet search engines as part of their search strategy when looking for digital
learning resources, it is important that metadata and, when possible, the content itself can
be indexed by internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo!
Mechanisms for exposing content for reuse by other services and portals include metadata
harvesting with OAI-PMH and searching specifications such as SRU/SRW and SQI.
Syndication mechanisms such as Atom and RSS are also important, since they permit fine-
grained linking of users to categories of content, at the behest of the user. The appropriate
choices for exposing content will be determined by the strategy chosen by a repository for
reaching its user market. It is a perfectly valid strategy in some cases not to expose a user
interface at all but to ensure that the repository contents are available via third party services
instead.
2.5.10 Ease the burden of metadata creation

Metadata is important. It is necessary in the management of learning resources as well as in
finding content and assessing its usefulness. Unfortunately, creating high quality metadata is
problematic. Most users don’t like to describe resources and don’t do it well. Professional
indexers are expensive and not always as consistent as one might expect. Many metadata
attributes can be populated from the context in which a resource is created (e.g., its author)
and from the resource itself. Therefore, automatic and semi-automatic generation of
metadata using systems/tools is desirable where possible and appropriate. In a multilingual
context, the use of automatic metadata translation tools can also prove cost effective.
2.5.11 Use controlled vocabularies

Controlled vocabularies are instrumental in creating consistent descriptions of resources.
Moreover, when available in multiple languages, they make possible the automatic
translation of these descriptions. Although they are becoming increasingly popular, the best
way of combining approaches based on folksonomies with controlled vocabularies is still
unclear and repository owners should make a decision on when to use each approach
based on their own circumstances.
2.6 References
IMS (2005) IMS Application Profile Guidelines, IMS GLC, October 2005. Available at
http://www.imsglobal.org/ap/index.html
Nilsson (2008) M. Nilsson, Harmonization of Metadata Standards, Deliverable D-4.7,
ProLearn Network of Excellence in Professional Learning, January 2008. Available at
http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/lomi/images/5/52/D4.7-prolearn.pdf

3 Sharing mechanisms
3.1 Overview
Three primary functions of digital repositories have been identified in this report as
depositing, storing, and accessing digital content. Because digital repositories can take
many forms (from dedicated enterprise content management systems to portable
devices such as iPods, to virtual collections) these core functions are typically extended
or qualified (e.g., enabling browsing and searching). It is certainly the case that digital
repositories are often platforms for sharing content, and sometimes also practice, so the
interfaces that enable this sharing become very important. These interfaces can enable
both open (free) access and commercial transactions (as in the case of the California
State Digital Marketplace).
When it comes to implementing mechanisms or protocols for sharing content there
appear to be two main kinds of approach – either through exposing content in ways that
enable direct search or by harvesting to build collections. The section on standards
provides technical details.
Another way to look at sharing mechanisms is to consider the range of tools and
applications, not just the standard protocols for content exchange. Thus many Web 2.0
applications can be used to add value to repository collections (e.g., Connotea,
del.icio.us, blogs, wikis).
Ultimately, repository owners can choose the level to which they make the content in
their collections available. Repositories may have the potential to both contain and
expose (or share) data, information and knowledge. Conversely, they also have the
potential to become silos that lock up this content. There exist value propositions for
developing content repositories that are ‘open access’, and those that are closed or have
restricted access – it will be the context that determines which. Thus, while there is a
strong global movement towards opening up publicly funded research repositories there
are also certainly many examples where limited access will prevail for privacy and
security reasons. Likewise, there will always be a marketplace where goods and services
are commercially transacted.
3.2 Introduction
Repositories represent high value nodes within the multitude of networks of the Web –
they are typically concentrations of resources and associated services. Thus, sharing
mechanisms associated with repositories are an important means of unlocking the value
held within these repositories.
Many of the repository projects we have studied have been instigated for the explicit
purpose of enabling the sharing of content.
A repository and guidelines for its management must be considered in an overall context
of infrastructure, desktop tools, workflow processes, stakeholders it is serving, etc.
‘Sharing’ educational resources has also become a global movement in its own right. In
a certain sense initiatives such as Wikipedia and WikiEducator represent one
manifestation of what is termed Open Educational Resources (OER). In some academic
circles the term Open Access to scholarly works describes the same thing. Not only is

Wikipedia content typically of a high quality but it is managed in a widely distributed
manner and is publicly available for free. Wikipedia and services like it (e.g.,
Connexions) therefore also represent a kind of repository. There are many examples of
OER repositories and a growing voice advocating it. A common argument justifying the
movement is that ‘taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational
resources’ (the Cape Town Declaration).
Given that the overall intention for sharing content is primarily to promote wide exposure
and reuse it is useful to consider four basic questions adapted from Robson (2007) that
cut to the core of this issue:
- Can I find it? (Search and Discovery)
- May I use it? (Rights Management)
- Will it work? (Interoperability and Formats)
- Is it useful? (Pedagogy and Validity)
These questions offer a convenient primer for those involved in repository administration.
3.3 Issues
The following issues have been identified from a wide range of sources that document
current practice. The prefixes D, S and A are used to indicate whether the issue relates
to one of the three main repository functions: deposit, storage and access.
3.3.1 Accommodating humans and machines

DA – There is an ‘ecology’ of users to be considered that includes both humans and
machines interacting with repositories – and so both need to be considered in terms of
overall functional design.
A – Learners and parents will increasingly become direct users of repositories without
necessarily having intervention from teachers. An important question to resolve is to what
extent they will have access. Managing this access is important for both the repository
administrator and end user. {5}
3.3.2 Making the business case explicit

DSA – If one of the aims of a repository ‘owner’ is to enable the sharing and exchange of
resources held in the repository then it is necessary to make clear what the benefits to all
stakeholders are. For example, in inviting users to contribute or suggest a resource to be
included the benefits and outcomes of doing so should be made clear. In some sites the ‘add
a link’ section seems to be more geared to directing traffic to their site than to a wider
community of practice.
3.3.3 Resource discovery

A – Navigational cues to content both within and external to a repository need to be
considered – ‘users would find clear signposting and cross referencing between relevant
content across different repositories helpful’. {1}
A – The process of finding suitable resources can be ‘both frustrating and overwhelming’ for
novice users. Examples include:
• ‘the plethora of possible places to go to find a resource’
• ‘barriers between sectors in resource availability’

• ‘variability in quality of descriptive information (metadata) to search against’
• ‘lack of professional networks for sharing practice’
• ‘lack of willingness, time, or incentives to share resources one has developed’. {7}
A – Human-readable repositories and registries need to support a range of browse, search
and other discovery services.
A – It is important to enable subject-based views of existing collections using automated
procedures.
DSA – There is an expanding array of resource types available for learners. For example,
structured content such as resource lists and collections of topic-based resources will be just
as useful as purposed ‘learning objects’.
A – Categorising content only provides one method of organising content for later discovery
– metadata must be sufficiently developed to accommodate search and discovery of content
through pathways not bound by taxonomies. Identifying these pathways is an issue.
3.3.4 Federation
There is a common trend that emerges when content is shared. When you start to search for
content in a collection, users tend to want to access-related content from other collections as
well. Making this easier to manage pushes the technology towards a model of federation.
A – Repositories participating in federations need to support agreed mechanisms or protocols
(using standards) for exposing content and/or metadata for harvesting or discovery.
A – Where a repository holds multiple collections or a repository belongs to a federation
there is a need to co-ordinate the way in which search services interact.
A – Search capabilities developed by federations such as LORN do not necessarily rule out
the requirement for local/member repository owners to build search interfaces into their
existing systems. {26}
A – Cultural organisations, and typically members of federations, often wish to retain some
branding when their records are displayed via a third party portal.
DSA – Repositories participating in federations need to provide metadata in an agreed
standard format (e.g., using Dublin Core, LOM or MARC base standards or application
profiles of them, RSS or ATOM).
DSA – It is important to balance institutional and inter-institutional requirements in the
promotion and development of collaborative approaches to improving institutional
infrastructure.
3.3.5 Web 2.0 and the provision of value-added services

DA – Repositories need to be able to interact with social bookmarking systems, automated
indexing systems (e.g., Autonomy) and community added metadata.
A – DfES Channels Review noted that only ‘a handful’ of sites provide opportunities for
collaboration between learners through links with Web 2.0 style tools. {13}
DSA – ‘Rip, mix, and burn’ is a slogan characteristic of Web 2.0. Policies that either enable
this or not are probably necessary if the repository is marketed as supporting the sharing
and exchange of content.
D – Infrastructure is needed to support workflows involved in peer review of content.

S – Demand for support for the development of Personal Collections will increase.
3.3.6 Balancing commercial and non-commercial inputs

A – While there is no hard and fast rule as to optimum balance between sponsored content
and user-contributed content, it is important to develop clear policies on this if there is an aim
to promote the sharing of content. Some users may be disenfranchised by commercial
contributors who can ‘buy’ presence. The Curriculum Online model has allowed some
(commercial) suppliers to dominate. {11}
3.3.7 Policies and tools for reuse

A – Users generally enjoy adapting and creating resources and are keen to explore such
features. {15}
DA – Downloading and then re-uploading resources with comments, annotations or changes
of any kind requires some kind of version control, tracking or alternative management
mechanism.
DA – Enabling users to easily rate and review resources provides both assessment and
reassurance for human users and metadata for search procedures.
DSA – It is important to consider the range of content formats that need to be supported:
should the repository owner consider the needs of users who may be downloading content?
A simple example is in the provision of a link to Acrobat Reader for PDF files, but other
examples would include accommodating different browser behaviours with java applets and
requirements for specialised plug-ins.
DA – The granularity of content objects made available for sharing and reuse will impact
upon interoperability between systems that interact with the repository. For example, in the
case of learning objects the repository owner may wish or need to also provide access to
authoring or editing tools to streamline and QA the deposit of resources.
3.3.8 Exposing content and/or metadata for search and harvesting

DA – Repositories sometimes need to support multiple mechanisms for exposing content
and to expose metadata in multiple formats, as well as exposing any homepage and
individual resources to internet search engines.
DA – In order to remove the data pollution as a result of ‘screen scraping’, repositories need
to expose their content, or metadata describing their content, via some form of machine-to-
machine interface.
A – Search services associated with a particular repository may also need to be discovered,
so will need to conform to an appropriate specification such as OpenSearch.
A – Exposing content to Web crawlers is an important factor and one that needs to be
considered in any strategic decisions made with the aim of exposing content to a wide, or
even tightly defined, audience.
A – Users expect page-ranking algorithms to be used to rank search results.
A – It is vital to enable search engines to comprehensively index content thus allowing
potential users to find content, but not necessarily access it (where restrictions are in place).
3.3.9 Licensing
DSA – Managing content licences can either be a blocker or an enabler to sharing.

DSA – Enabling commercial transactions will also involve explicit issuing of licences, some
of which may accommodate some scope for sharing.
3.3.10 Access management

A – Widespread implementation and use of access management mechanisms will facilitate
different levels of sharing - by groups, open access and/or password protection.
A – The Learning Federation (TLF) in Australia provides a useful case study. Different
jurisdictions and different schools sectors (e.g., public, private, Catholic) provide different
ways of accessing the full collections of TLF content, sometimes via physical media
distribution to the individual school level, sometimes via supporting harvesting of content and
metadata to the jurisdiction level, or by access directly from the TLF site. Various external
technical (bandwidth and infrastructure) and administrative factors (support models etc.)
have influenced the method of access. The TLF infrastructure has been built to support the
harvesting of content and metadata to facilitate access via remote sites provided by the
jurisdictions to overcome bandwidth and supply issues. {25}
DSA – Is it the content and/or the metadata that is to be shared?
3.3.11 Cultural issues

DA – Encouraging a permissive environment for teachers to directly share small objects,
images, files and/or fragments in an informal manner can present a significant challenge.
D – It may be necessary to consider how to put in place the right kind of incentives for
preservation, repurposing and ‘rescuing’ legacy materials. Before the content can be shared
it must be contributed.
3.3.12 User interface

A – Service providers should be aware of moves towards ‘unbundling’ or ‘de-portalising’
portal services to encourage user contribution and input, including tagging and description of
resources.
A – Teachers sometimes wish to use learning objects without an LMS or other external
software interpreting the structure of the learning object.
D – Provision of functionality options is not sufficient but requires explanation and
navigational cues. For example, the QIA Gateway homepage has an ‘upload your own
content’ link but it is not clear when and why users should use this feature. {59}
3.3.13 Syndication
A – There is some potential for syndication formats (RSS & ATOM) to be used as a medium
for exposing metadata to other repositories.
3.4 Exemplars
1. There are many exemplars from the sources identified in the Literature Review. Some are
concerned with management of a single repository (e.g., MERLOT), some are concerned
with federations (e.g., LORN, EUN Learning Resource Exchange), while some are more
focused on the development of specifications (e.g., OAI-PMH and OAI-ORE). In all these
projects sharing mechanisms are identified as what matters. For example, in Australia:
‘the Learning Object Repository Network Project (LORN) is building the capacity of
the Australian VET system to share teaching and learning resources that support
flexible delivery. As the key source of e-learning resources for the VET system LORN

provides a foundation for sharing resources within the VET system, and establishing
and embedding agreed principles in the design and development of e-learning
resources and resource repositories.’
Information about each learning object in the repositories is harvested centrally and is
searchable via search interfaces. The main search interface is at:
http://lorn.flexiblelearning.net.au/
2. The DfES Report prepared by Tribal Group in 2006 on Personalised Content Cross-
Sector Mapping identifies several ‘examples of practice and research’ including:
- Intute
- Jorum
- col
- BBC content sites (incl JAM) and other media providers
- learning & skills web
- strategic e-content alliance
- ferl
- ask butler
- aclearn.net
- excellence gateway
- RBCs
- HE Subject centres
- CoVEs
- TrEACL & CACL programmes.
3. A number of repository-based projects (e.g., the Learning Federation in Australia and
the Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council in the UK) are mapping vocabularies from
different jurisdictions and/or the cultural sector onto curriculum structures. {8}
4. The Tribal Report ‘Personalised Content Cross-Sector Mapping’ stated: ‘There is a
strong view amongst many of the interviewees that Web 2.0 approaches and related
ideas are important for the future of personalised content. This might mean building Web
2.0 style functionality into UK content repositories / services. Or it might in some
circumstances mean eschewing investment in new systems and using global Web 2.0
sites that are already available.’ {7}
The DfES Channels Review highlights BBC Jam as the prime exemplar for enabling
Web 2.0 functionality but this is now defunct. {13}
5. The Tribal Report also lists these effective ways of encouraging people to share
content:
• Groups developing a specific example of practice;
• Showcases of practice for a particular group;
• User groups for particular tools;
• ‘Cascade’ type models; and
• Giving specific staff who are part of practitioners’ community responsibility as
‘e-champions’ / ‘e-mentors’ / ‘e-guides’.
6. The IESR http://iesr.ac.uk/ is an example of a well-used registry service pointing users
towards services, collections and agents.

7. The Open University has developed a range of tools {14} which facilitate sharing of
content including:
• Units can be downloaded from LabSpace (for reuse) in a variety of formats
including IMS CP, Moodle back-up, Zip and OU XML.
• LabSpace allows individual assets to be downloaded in native format Flash,
GIF, Word, MP3, etc.).
• LabSpace has RSS feeds, segmented by type.
• OpenLearn includes various Web 2.0 features including tagging by end users
(see also UI section below). More details at
http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/news/news-full.php?id=12857 .
• Reworked and adapted materials can be contributed back into LabSpace (but
not LearningSpace).
8. The Peoples’ Network ‘Discover’ service has developed a data upload tool which is
open source, schema independent, validating and secure for use by (usually smaller)
repositories who are unable or unwilling to allow harvesting but do not wish to expose
their content via a ‘live’ machine search interface.
http://www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk/discover/ .
9. The University of Pretoria utilised existing services such as Google Scholar and Open
Linking which are particularly relevant in higher education. They report, ‘Since our clients
use Google, and want and prefer a Google interface, we decided to find ways of how to
utilise Google Scholar to the advantage of ourselves and our clients. Through Google
Scholar we would like to make our clients more aware of the valuable resources to which
we subscribe. We are of the opinion that Google Scholar and Scholar SFX offer many of
the advantages a federated search product and link resolver would have offered.’
http://fedsearch.blogspot.com/
10. The National Library of Australia pursues a similar approach.
11. The Calibrate European project has developed an infrastructure that enables content
sharing across different jurisdictions. {23}
12. Reuse of edna content is free and encouraged via various tools:
• Shared Information Services
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/resources/toolkit
• Generators
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/resources/toolkit/generators/
• RSS
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/resources/toolkit/rss_services
• Feed2JS tool
http://feed2js.edna.edu.au/feed2js/
13. The MELT project has developed a hybrid approach to resource discovery that
combines harvesting (OAI-PMH) and federated searching (SQI) http://www.melt-
project.eu .
14. The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) site provides a news feed to Open Education
Resources (OER), promoting open content http://www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/4967 .

CoL also highlights the economic benefits and importance of utilising shared ICT
infrastructure within the developing world. Paul West, CoL’s Director of Knowledge
Management, says, ‘It is becoming essential for people in small states to work, learn and
collaborate online’ (West, 2006).
15. RUBRIC {55} highlights the importance of planning and developing a business case
that helps engage stakeholders in the development of institutional repositories. For
example, benefits might include:
• Open access to research/knowledge
• Controlled access to research where conditions exist
• Increasing visibility of an institution's research profile
• Preservation to ensure that a deposited item remains continuously accessible
• Internal management of research outputs
• External reporting on research (see below)
• Support for teaching and learning.
16. When content is contributed to MERLOT it goes through a review process,
http://taste.merlot.org/peerreviewprocess.html. An initial filtering of content to be
reviewed is conducted by two experts in the field according to the evaluation criteria
which include quality, potential effectiveness and ease of use. The review results and
user ratings can be used as ranking criteria in the results of a search. Users can quickly
identify high value materials by peer review ratings, user comments and by seeing how
many personal collections include this content etc. They can drill down to greater levels
of detail on the materials through use of active links. Clicking the title provides more
detailed information on the content and author and also provides the link to the actual
content.
The Faculty Awards program and other forms of recognition that are of value to the
contributor are key mechanisms for this. In this model the contributors also gain value by
having materials reviewed; thus the fear of review is substantially removed and the
overall quality of materials increases. There is also assistance for contributors to improve
the content through the review process.
Other strategies to promote sharing include the range of professional development
support opportunities and the strong focus on communities as a set of supporting
activities.
17. The Quality For Re-Use (Q4R) project is sharing resources via the website, the wiki
and through the project and GLOBE repositories. Focus is on quality and re-use. {58}
18. Teacher Resource Exchange, NGfL allows users to submit resources and to review
and comment on other people’s resources. {61}
19. TES Resource Bank:
• Has an easy to use upload interface which provides two metadata sections:
Description (name, description, keywords) and Information (topic, chosen
from a combination box dynamically populated after selection of subject and
key stage).
• Provides a simple ratings mechanism.

20. Regional Broadband Consortia sites:
• support their communities with eNewsletters and Web 2.0 including
community forums
• provide good links to syndicated content (via RSS and other means).
21. Connexions, hosted by Rice University in the US, represents an exemplar in terms of
building a shared repository of ‘open access’ content by bringing together authors,
teachers and learners. Its online guidance is very helpful and clear for all stakeholders. It
aims to ‘reinvent how we write, edit, publish and use textbooks and other learning
materials. It is a global repository of educational content that can be described in four
words:
Create – in Connexions, everyone is free to create educational materials and
contribute them to the repository
Rip – in Connexions, everyone is free to copy the material and customize it
Mix – in Connexions, everyone is free to mix the material together into new books
and courses
Burn – in Connexions, everyone is free to create finished products like e-learning
web courses, CD-ROMs, and even printed books
All of this is accomplished using open-access software tools and free-use material
through the Creative Commons Attribution license. Connexions is not a tool for creating
lesson plans and it is not a container for course syllabuses.’ However, it should be noted
that some content profiled on Connexions is only available for purchase.
There are several ways that Connexions promotes collaboration and sharing:
- Co-authorship
- Assigning additional maintainers of content
- Workgroups
- Suggesting changes
- Deriving a copy.

3.5.1 If the repository is to be made available for sharing it is essential to make
clear its primary purpose and focus. Collections of resources only become
valuable once such context is made explicit. Explanatory narrative can provide
added value for anyone discovering a resource. Such narrative can either be
associated with the metadata of the resource itself or it can be associated with a
collection of related resources.
3.5.2 Efficient and accurate resource and service discovery is a critical enabler to
sharing. Consideration should be given to how resources and services
associated with a repository are classified and organised. Assignment of
metadata is essential and multiple pathways for discovery should be available.
Navigational cues to content both within and external to a repository need to be
considered.
3.5.3 Repository owners should seek advice concerning issues of information

architecture and the development of an appropriate content model – a model that

clearly identifies the range of content types, workflows and expected interactions.
3.5.4 A repository and the guidelines for its management must be considered in an
overall context of organisational infrastructure, desktop tools, workflow
processes, stakeholder requirements, etc.
3.5.5 Learning content can be discovered in many formats from a wide variety of
sources; but when it is in a modular format it is also interoperable with other
modular content and therefore more valuable than standalone content. It is
advisable for online course content to be developed and stored in standard
formats that allow for maximum interoperability and exchange.
3.5.6 Consider whether a ‘tour’ of the site and its capabilities (and/or a ‘Quick Start’
guide) might assist users in taking advantage of what is offered. Explanations
need to accompany tools, particularly for novice users.
3.5.7 Repositories participating in federations need to provide metadata in an

agreed standard format (e.g., using Dublin Core, LOM or MARC base standards
or application profiles of them, RSS or Atom).
3.5.8 If the repository has different collections available to different groups of users
it is essential to resolve what the roles are (e.g., learner, parent, teacher, peer,
third party repository) and assign permissions and protocols accordingly.
3.5.9 If the repository is to be populated by harvesting and indexing records from

third parties it may be important to investigate methods of ‘branding’ such
records.
3.5.10 In order to maximise exposure to third party services it will be important to

support multiple mechanisms for exposing content and to expose metadata in
multiple formats, as well as exposing any homepage and individual resources to
internet search engines or Web crawlers.
3.5.11 If the repository provides its own search service then in order for the search
service to be discoverable it will need to conform to an open standard search
specification (e.g., OpenSearch, SQI, SRU/SRW) and to be registered in one or
more registries (e.g., IESR).
3.5.12 Where the management of intellectual property and copyright are required, a
combination of risk management policies (e.g., ‘take-down’ policies concerning
objectionable content and individuals having to warrant that submitted content is
not encumbered by third party IP) and open content licensing (e.g., Creative
Commons) provide most potential for sharing.
3.5.13 Where the submission or deposit of content proceeds in a distributed manner

it is essential to implement some kind of version control, tracking or alternative
management mechanism.
3.5.14 Providing opportunities for users of the content to rate content is a potential
enabler to engaging greater exchange of insight as well as content. For teachers,
such rating and quality judgements may be intimidating and a brake on
contribution. Allowing them to post using a username or nom-de-plume until they
are confident may provide enough reassurance.

3.5.15 Policies regarding the distribution of content held by the repository may need
to be made explicit.
3.5.16 The range of value-added services a repository provides is a direct function of

the constituency it is serving and the nature of the content held. For example, if
the content is SCORM conformant it may be necessary to provide a SCORM
‘player’ or ‘sandpit’ environment.
3.5.17 Maximising the discoverability of content useful to users will likely entail
navigation and discovery services associated with external sources. Providing
effective means for doing this is essential if sharing content is to be encouraged.
3.5.18 Advocacy of sharing mechanisms is an activity that should not be overlooked

– encouraging a permissive environment for teachers to directly share content,
even in an informal manner, is a significant undertaking. Before the content can
shared it must be contributed.
3.6 References
Cape Town Open Education Declaration (September 2007)
http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration
Connexions
http://cnx.org/
Open Education Resources (OER) Handbook, Center for Open and Sustainable Learning
http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook
Robson, R. (2007). ‘Reusability and Reusable Design’, in Robert Reiser and John V.
Dempsey (eds)Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, 2nd Edition
Tremerie, Q. (2006). Sharing Learning Resources with the eMapps Repository
http://www.slideshare.net/quentin.tremerie/sharing-learning-resources-with-the-emapps-
repository/
West, P. (2006). Virtual University Develops Learning Content, Connections – COL EdTech
News, October 2006
http://www.col.org/colweb/site/cache/offonce/pid/4149
WikiEducator
http://www.wikieducator.org/

4 Marketing to users
4.1 Overview
A number of issues raised in this section are relevant to those wishing to market or widen
the use of their repository. Several of these issues touch on technical, legal and cultural
factors dealt with more fully in the appropriate section but here their particular relevance to
marketing is explored.
4.2 Introduction
Those wishing to expand the audience for their repositories and the resources they contain
will need to recognise these facts of life when planning strategy and tactics. Teachers are
not very different from other information seekers or users. They report being short of time,
intimidated by technical issues, happier to download than to upload, confused and
ill-informed about IPR and legal issues and happier to trust colleagues than experts on
issues on quality and suitability. They are unwilling to add extensive metadata to the
resources they do upload but would like substantial information on suitability, quality, age
group and curriculum relevance when they search for something to download. Google is
increasingly their first port of call, whatever they are searching for.
4.3 Issues
4.3.1 Search engines
Most teachers looking for learning resources will use a search engine (particularly Google)
as the first port of call. Even large portals, ‘umbrella sites’ and facilities such as the DfES
page’s own search engine and Curriculum OnLine have often not been heard of, let alone
used. Most of the education workforce is unaware of the range of digital repositories,
software and tools that are potentially available to them online. Even if you can maintain
extremely high quality in your repository, if you want to maximise usage then your top priority
should be to ensure all technical measures have been taken to allow search engines and
Google in particular to index your metadata and/or, if appropriate, the resources themselves.
4.3.2 Categorisation, recommendation and metadata

Teachers say they want repositories that categorise information by grade level, content area
and type or key stage, year group and subject. However, it would be unfeasibly expensive to
expect repository administrators to manually create the necessary detailed metadata to allow
this to happen. Moreover, teachers say they are seeking resources with specific pedagogical
relevance rather than generic resources, and that in this regard they trust the
recommendations of other teachers, especially colleagues, rather than those of ‘experts’.
4.3.3 Size of resources

Teachers say that many resources are too large: they should be smaller than a lesson and
ideally they would like access to individual chunks such as graphics, images, tables of data
etc. At the same time they do like to look at exemplar lessons or complete schemes of work
which use the available resources.

4.3.4 Community and culture
Teachers don't want to spend time repurposing, and at most will only make minor edits. Yet
they are often critical and express reluctance to use resources that aren’t their own. This is a
cultural issue that can be best addressed by institutions and employers. However,
repositories can contribute by recognising the prevalent ‘no sharing culture’ and taking
measures to counter and subvert it by encouraging confidence and a sense of an ‘online
community’ amongst users.

The potential audience often feels that repositories are generally too difficult to use and that
to acquire and repurpose the resources requires technical skills beyond average teacher
competence.
4.3.6 Management and maintenance

If you can assure your users that your resources are up to date, this can be a powerful
marketing advantage over textbooks and printed publications; however, poorly maintained
and infrequently updated web pages are a disincentive to users. Active risk management is
key to maintaining veracity of information, good reputation and therefore good public
relations.
4.3.7 Tracking usage

Users wish to keep track of the resources they have used in the recent past but do not
necessarily have that information stored in a structured way.
4.3.8 Future use and users

Data stored in repositories will increasingly be viewed directly and used on a variety of
learning devices including, but not restricted to, games consoles, mobile phones, PDAs and
by a variety of non-professional users (e.g., parents and students).
4.3.9 Cultural organisations

Cultural organisations face a number of marketing challenges for their e-learning materials.
Smaller cultural organisations are worried that the market will be dominated by a small
number of large players (e.g., national museums). But cultural organisations often do not
target collections particularly finely; for example, they will aim something at ‘children’ rather
than ‘key stage 3’ (as we have seen above, teachers are looking for precisely targeted
materials). It seems that cultural organisations need some steer about what teachers want.
4.3.10 What is an appropriate digital learning resource for teachers to use?

It is important for repository owners to understand precisely what it is that their potential
users are looking for. Becta's Choosing and Using Digital Learning Resources: Draft, 2007
{20}
is a (draft) guide for teachers to help them to select high quality and appropriate digital
learning resources. As such it would be useful for anyone setting up a repository to see the
kind of materials which they need to include and which Becta are recommending. The guide
poses and briefly covers the following questions which might be used as a checklist by
repository owners:
Does it match the curriculum?
Is it inclusive and accessible?
Does it engage learners and promote effective learning?

Is it easy to use?
Does it offer effective formative assessment?
Does it offer robust summative assessment?
Does it encourage innovation?
What if we make a mistake while using it?
Are the images, sound files and videos fit for purpose?
Can it work with other systems?
Does the resource tell me what I need to know?
What about sharing?
The recommendations it makes (such as accessibility, user interface, relevance to
curriculum) are all targeted at the design and use of individual resources, not use of a
repository, nevertheless it would be worthwhile for repository owners to review them to
understand what their target market is (or should be) looking for.
4.3.11 Marketing mechanisms

Alerting mechanisms (e.g., RSS and Atom) are useful in notifying users of new content being
added to a repository. Some repositories report success with newsletters to subscribed
users; others even send leaflets to teachers. However, email alerts and newsletters are
gradually losing subscribers (presumably in the face of the increasing volume of email
generally). The relative success of different means of marketing, for example, RSS, online
marketing, publishing in print journals/advertising etc., is difficult to measure, especially for
small organisations.
4.4 Exemplars
24HM (The24 Hour Museum – currently at http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk and to be
relaunched under the name http://www.culture24.org.uk in Spring 2008) provides an
information pack, ‘Museum in a Classroom’, which contains information on how to make use
of the resources available on the site.
The Learning Federation (TLF). {25} An important factor in stimulating the use and uptake of
TLF resources is through the provision of advice, support and tools that assist teachers. The
content is widely regarded to be of high quality and well suited to the teaching requirements.
The content is free to use in the schools sector, so rather than quality or cost hurdles the
issue moves to facilitation and support. A range of tools and other services are provided at
the level of jurisdictions and these have assisted teachers well in their adoption cycles.
edna - The Networker newsletter is sent fortnightly via email to 2631 subscribers, published
online and available via RSS,
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/news/newsletters/networker
Approximately 1,000 educators received professional development in 2007 through
face to face workshops and presentations at conferences;
Market research is currently being conducted into identifying non-users
Regular blogging about services and development by 4 team members:
http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/
http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/myedna2/
http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/tcotton/

http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/nlothian/
The SUGAR Project provides case studies and scenarios to assist users,
http://apsr.anu.edu.au/apsrfw/sugar/index.php?pid=65
JISC has published a set of short questions and answers which are useful for researchers
who have never used a digital repository before and also for potential repository owners to
check the sort of issues which users might raise, <http://digbig.com/4geyx>
MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative {54} takes a two-pronged approach to external audiences –
it responds reactively to user questions and feedback and to media questions and requests
for interviews while proactively building awareness among the educational community
through an electronic newsletter. Similarly with internal audiences, it responds reactively to
user questions, feedback and requests for presentations from faculty and students, while
proactively approaching them through the campus news, awareness raising and making a
case for participation with faculty and by participating in departmental meetings,
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/HowTo/Technology-mitocw-architecture.htm
The RUBRIC project and toolkit provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for developing a
Marketing Plan,
http://www.rubric.edu.au/packages/RUBRIC_Toolkit/docs/Publicity_and_Marketing.htm
The MERLOT repository believes that different types of collections that are available for
reuse and each of these different types requires a different approach to marketing the value
of the collection and the reuse of its content to the target audience. For example, the nature
of the marketing task for publicly funded, free-for-use collections such as the Learning
Federation is quite different to those such as MERLOT that rely upon contributions of
resources from members. A key activity in marketing MERLOT from both contribution and
reuse perspectives has been that of recognition amongst peers and value of participation in
tenure and promotion.
Encouraging individual and institutional membership and participation has been driven
from a variety of perspectives. An important focus for MERLOT has been to align the re-
use of resources with institutional strategies (Carey and Hanley, 2007).
Access to Pedagogical Content Knowledge, teaching expertise content along with the
communities and functions such as the Kickstart your CV with MERLOT, are also valuable
marketing tools. The latter is a method for exporting profile content from MERLOT for
inclusion in CVs, http://www.merlot.org/
Learning Curve {65} from the UK's National Archives makes a good range of support
materials available (teachers’ notes, etc.) to back up their documents, photos and film
resources. It features a very useful ‘how to use this site’ section.
Closely associated with the TES brand and taking full advantage of the fact that many
teachers visit the TES site regularly looking for job information, the TES Resource Bank {66}
has created a well-used site ‘where you can share materials with other teachers,
recommend your favourite teaching resources, and rate and review other teachers'
contributions and recommendations’.’
TEEM {68} — ‘Advice and guidance that teachers trust’ makes evaluating educational
software its main thrust – its unique selling point is excellent detailed impartial reviews from
teachers.

4.5.1 Access for search engines
The top marketing priority for all repository administrators should be to take all technical
measures necessary to allow search engines and Google in particular to index the
repository's metadata and, if appropriate, the resources themselves.
4.5.2 Metadata creation and recommending/rating resources

In order to provide the kind of ‘suitability information’ desired by teachers, repositories should
consider implementing some sort of recommender / rating / star / review and comment
system so that teachers who found a resource useful can comment and indicate for which
key stage/subject/grade etc. the resource is suitable.
Repository stewards need to ensure that metadata is created for resources – often this
involves taking a view on how to maximise the value for consumers without placing too great
a burden on depositors. One way to achieve this might be to create a minimal profile where
teaching subject and age range are the only mandatory structured metadata elements but
other elements are recommended. Manual creation of descriptive metadata by repository
administrators is expensive and should be reserved for the highest quality resources and
those which cannot be indexed. It will also be important to use whatever metadata is already
available for a resource and to react positively to opportunities to automatically create
metadata.
4.5.3 Sharing resources, great and small

Repository administrators should consider providing encouragement and a permissive
environment for teachers to legally share small objects, images, files and/or fragments in an
informal manner. In doing so they should also consider making available a small number of
exemplar lessons or schemes of work which illustrate the value and possible uses of the
repository's resources.
4.5.4 Community building to widen audience

Community building by repositories (making users feel part of a trusted online community
with common interests and worthwhile skills and expertise) can encourage trust, confidence
and wider use of resources.

There is a need to address the preconception that repositories are generally too difficult to
use and that to acquire and repurpose the resources requires technical skills beyond teacher
competence through good interface design. See also section 5.
4.5.6 Currency and maintenance

Data and web pages should be frequently and visibly maintained and updated, and this
should be allowed for in any budgets. Similarly, an active risk management strategy should
be in place. With these policies in place, currency and reliability can be powerful marketing
aids for a repository.
4.5.7 Profiles and personal record of usage

Repository administrators should consider allowing logged-in users access to view a record
of previously used and/or previously viewed resources. The ability to store and retrieve such
information could be a useful feature for marketing.

4.5.8 Future users and devices
Repository administrators should be aware of marketing to a future wider audience (e.g.,
parents and students) using a variety of devices.
4.5.9 Marketing by cultural organisations

Cultural organisations should recognise the needs and wants of teachers as expressed in
this and other reports. Cultural sector bodies should explore provision of more
comprehensive ‘teachers’ and ‘learning’ areas within their sites.
4.5.10 What should teachers be looking for?

Repository owners should familiarise themselves with what their target market is (or should
be) looking for. Becta's Choosing and Using Digital Learning Resources: Draft, 2007 {20}
would be a good place to start.
4.5.11 Success factors

Tribal's report, Becta-DfES personalised content cross sector mapping 2006, {7} reports that
for a content service to be successful, it should:
Be linked into the practitioner target audience’s consciousness through the channels
that they normally relate to;
Support progression from storing private material, to sharing with a few friends, to a
local community, to globally;
Have influencers in the ’field force’ of people supporting the development of practice
who are enthusiastic about it, so that when they see good resources (or practice)
developed by a practitioner, they encourage sharing;
Have a ground-up ’buzz’ supporting it, and be supported top-down too; and
Be easy to use and have the right functionality.
5 User interface
5.1 Overview
A repository’s user interface plays a crucial part in attracting and retaining users. For
repositories aiming at or working with a specific community, such as education professionals
and other users of learning resources, it is important to present a familiar image and to
appear to genuinely be part of the community of learning.
5.2 Introduction
Teachers value the opinions of their colleagues and appreciate a sense of being part of a
community. Familiar terms help this, as do familiar names and structures. Both browse and
search functions should be offered and the best repositories offer help and support
alongside their resources; this help should extend to guidance on IPR, legal and ownership
issues. This should include help on using different types of resource. Accurate discovery
should be aided by efficient use and display of metadata, however it has been created. It is
important to offer users as wide a choice of content as possible, and one way of doing this is
through collaboration and cross searching distributed repositories.

5.3 Issues
5.3.1 Repositories are ‘too difficult to use’
There is an impression, whether supported by facts or not, that repositories are difficult to
use and that they require technical skills beyond the competence of many teachers. Some
sources suggest that linking users to free sources of software will ameliorate this, but we are
sceptical. If a resource is an image in jpeg format or data in a spreadsheet format then a
teacher will either know how to deal with it or not: confidence and experience will likely be
the issue, rather than access to software. If the resource is more complex, such as a
multimedia presentation, it is doubtful that merely pointing the user at editing software will be
helpful enough to allow easy repurposing. The best repositories provide help and support
services alongside the provision of resources. This also aids user retention and marketing.
5.3.2 Teachers value community, colleagues and familiar terms

Teachers prefer to trust their colleagues' judgement and they are wary of making public the
resources which they themselves have created. One way of addressing this is to foster a
sense of community and this can be reflected throughout the user interface. In a similar vein,
they prefer a vocabulary with which they are already familiar – for example, if they are
presented with a ‘learning resource type’ classification whose terms are unfamiliar, it may
impede them from finding the right resource, or even cause them to give up. Similarly, on
being presented with unfamiliar terminology practitioners may not decide to go ahead with
the classification of a learning resource and drop the task. We can perhaps interchange the
general idea of ‘folksonomy’ with the description ‘most appropriate view for the users’ to
produce less of a barrier to engagement. This is an area where the technical solution moves
towards personalisation. We must remember that the true definition of a folksonomy is a
system or collection of informal tags which is constantly changing; however, if we stretch the
definition and cluster user-defined terms around the underlying structure of a classification
‘backbone’ we can perhaps have the best of both worlds.
5.3.3 Integrate with familiar tools and processes

Similarly it is important to reduce the effort and expertise required from staff by integrating
the publishing process as much as possible with the teachers' normal processes for creating
and managing course materials for classroom teaching.
5.3.4 Face saving and trust

Fear of looking stupid in public is a powerful and very common brake on sharing beyond
one's own institution. Informal sharing of resources is widespread but still happens almost
exclusively within each school environment.
5.3.5 Geographical location information

There is conflicting evidence on location information. Some sources report that teachers
prefer information apparently located in the UK because they assume that it will be more
directly relevant to the UK curriculum; but more general research indicates that the physical
location of a resource is of little relevance to whether end users consider it useful.
5.3.6 Problems with resource discovery

Efficient and accurate discovery is a critical enabler to sharing. On the whole, teachers'
behaviour in relation to difficulties in discovery are consistent with other user behaviour
encountered in other areas. Sample comments include (Freebody and Muspratt, 2007):

Search results were too broad and couldn’t [be made to be] more specific.
I found the actual finding of appropriate images difficult.
I [gave] up on the images as I could not afford the time needed to do the search for an
appropriate resource.
We found some of the search results obscure.
Some users also commented on the limited range of resources available.
5.3.7 What not to do

The exemplars section below provides indications of good practice; however, particularly for
user interface design, it is often interesting and instructive to learn from others' mistakes.
Here we present comments by our team on existing learning repositories or portals, suitably
anonymised. It may be instructive for current and potential repository owners to reflect on
their own services in the light of these comments.
1. A badly organised and jumbled site. No indication of what the contents of different
sections are. Site map is useless. Front page has a ‘browse resources’ link but no option to
search resources, only a general site search link. Resources can be browsed by subject or
topic, the relationship between subject and topic is not clear to me, though.
2. No way to limit searches – e.g. by age/ subject. The only way to do this is via
browse.
3. Search terms in advanced search interface are ambiguous and it isn’t clear how
multiple terms are aggregated (‘and’? ‘or’?). It appears to be ‘and’ but this means that it
allows illegal combinations to be selected (e.g. subject=Psychology, key stage=1) and return
inconsistent results (subject=Psychology, ks=any returns 22 hits, subject=Psychology, ks=4
returns 88 hits).
4. Too many icons in result lists.
5. Users can store a personal profile including teaching subject, study year/ key
stage, etc. (good) but it’s unclear if this is used or usable in any way when searching for
resources.
6. Another site with no search, only a browse interface. Only option is to browse by
key stage then by subject. Links to resources aren’t immediately obvious.
7. After standard subject/ key stage selection, which is OK (although it allows illegal
combinations), UI is clunky with combo box showing large drop down list … Detailed result
screen for single resource is poorly laid out. Search interface for resources allows search to
be conducted against multiple repositories, seems like a good idea, but I couldn’t get
anything other than the local repository search to work.
8. Browse only, no search. Easy to get taken out of this and into parent site with no
obvious links back.
9. At time of testing, tabs used to search/browse resources by subject, key stage or
publisher were broken so it was impossible to comment on UI.
5.4 Exemplars
The 24 Hour Museum ‘for teachers’ section has a ‘curriculum navigator’ which retrieves
resources from the main 24 Hour Museum database. The website has a special micro-site
aimed at children (http://www.show.me.uk) which also contains a teachers section.
OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) features include forums for learners and educators,
quick ratings and in-depth reviews, although it is unclear how widely these features are
actually used.

Users value ‘browse’ features but the navigation structure needs to be familiar. Coxhoe
school (http://www.coxhoe.durham.sch.uk/ ) and lgfl (http://cms.lgfl.net/lgfl ) are cited as
good examples.
In the European Learning Resource Exchange (http://www.lre.eun.org/ ) (LRE) a variety of
different systems (e.g., educational portals, LMSs) will be able to serve as LRE entry points
by integrating an LRE search interface. There is no limit to the way such an interface can be
customised.
The Learning Federation (http://www.tlf.edu.au/) (TLF) develops free online curriculum

content for all Australian and New Zealand schools and delivers it to educational
jurisdictions. TLF provides an interface that has been refined over the period of operation
and is well suited to the requirements of the teachers.
edna (http://www.edna.edu.au ), a user-centred design team. was established in 2007 to
address issues of user interface based on usability testing across all services.
The MELT portal http://melt-project.eu supports social tagging and bookmarking of learning
resources. MELT is an eContentPlus content enrichment project designed to provide users
of learning content in schools with access to more useful types of metadata that will allow
them to find resources that fit their needs, language, cultures and preferred ways of teaching
and learning. MELT follows three different approaches for creating new and better metadata:
1. Expert or trained indexers will enrich some MELT content;
2. Teachers use ‘folksonomy’ and ‘social tagging’ tools to add their own metadata to
MELT content they have used;
3. Automatic metadata generation techniques and tools are applied to increase the
quantity of metadata.
The key goal of the project is to create a new ‘metadata ecology’ involving all three
approaches.
SUGAR (Sustainability Guidelines for Australian Repositories) Project – a user-friendly
prototype is available at http://apsr.anu.edu.au/apsrfw/sugar/ .
The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) Learning Object Repository http://www.collor.org/col/
provides a number of access points into learning content, including:
Knowledge Finder (customised Google search)
News feeds
A link to Search of the CoL LOR – it is unclear why this search capability is only
enabled via a hyperlink and a direct search is not possible.
The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT)
(http://www.merlot.org ) interface is structured and consistent and has been developed over
several years. The portal interface is designed to facilitate access to the different aspects of
MERLOT that facilitate the MERLOT objectives. These include the community and
professional development activities as well as the content itself. In response to the
requirements to simplify discovery and selection (Carey and Hanley, 2007) the search
results have been structured to provide the highest value information to the user first and
then provide opportunities to drill down.
The TeacherNet (http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/ ) search interface for assemblies is clear
and simple. Results are clearly laid out and the plans themselves seem clear.

5.5.1 Creation date and copyright status
The repository interface should indicate the date of creation for each resource in a way that
is immediately visible to those searching for resources; and for each resource, indicate
clearly the copyright and licence status (different icons for different status next to the title, for
example).
5.5.2 Navigation, breadcrumbs and help along the way

Navigation should be clear and consistent with help available along the way. So-called
‘breadcrumbs’ showing where you are in the structure are useful. When browsing it is useful
to have easy access to a summary of how many resources are available in each category.
FAQs are also useful and should be available from multiple locations not just the homepage.
5.5.3 Search functionality

Search functions should allow users to search by subject and key stage, to easily distinguish
between resources which may be repurposed and those which may not and also to allow
users to distinguish easily between free and priced resources. Users judge search services
by the standards of the most familiar and widely used – currently Google. Therefore users
often request a ‘Google-like’ simple search option and require that the result ‘hit list’ should
be easily scannable (again Google is cited as a good example – other learning focussed
portals mentioned are described as not so good). {15}
5.5.4 Anonymity for new resource sharers

Repositories should consider allowing teachers to post resources under a nom-de-plume or
username. Obviously the repository owners must know the teacher's real identity for safety
reasons, but it would not be revealed to the public unless and until the user was happy to ‘go
public’.
5.5.5 Accurate discovery of appropriate content

Repository owners should consider carefully the mechanisms to support accurate discovery
of content as well as the mechanisms suitable to expand the volume of content that is
available. The latter normally points to a strategy for collaboration between collections which
in turn tends towards models for federation of collections.
5.5.6 Use familiar terms and structures in the interface

Vocabularies and classification schemes should largely feature terms which are familiar to
users. Whatever the underlying organisational and technical structure of the repository data,
the structure(s) visible to users should match the users’ subject view(s).
5.5.7 A community of users

Throughout the user interface and within all teacher communication, language should be
used which encourages teachers to feel part of a ‘community’ of professionals that share
and re-purpose. The interface should contribute to promoting a culture where teachers feel
that their contributions are valuable and important.
5.5.8 Recommendations and ratings

In order to provide the kind of ‘suitability information’ desired by teachers, repositories should
consider implementing some sort of recommender / rating / star / review and comment

system so that teachers who found a resource useful can comment and indicate for which
key stage/subject/grade etc. the resource is suitable.
5.5.9 Ordering search results

Recommendation and rating information might also be used to order search results. Users
now expect the kind of quality ordering of results produced by page ranking and other
algorithms. The order of search results, and particularly the relevance of the first page
presented, is a key indicator of quality of service.
5.5.10 Other interface guidelines

The Quality for Re-Use best practice Wiki, http://www.q4r.org/ , suggests repositories of
Learning Objects (LOs) should consider the following:
Descriptive structured résumés of the ways the LO can be reused
Offer simplified or full view of the metadata record
Graphical indications of how many people have downloaded and rated the LO;
and all repository providers should ask themselves:
Is the dialogue simple?
Does the interface speak the users' language?
Does the interface minimise the users' memory load?
Is the interface consistent?
Is feedback visible?
Are the exits clearly marked?
Do shortcuts exist?
Are the error messages explicit?
Are there means to prevent the errors?
Does an online help exist?
Thomas and Rothery {49} describes five ‘teacher’ usage scenarios, and lists six functionalities
that users need, viz:
support for community use;
ease of uploading;
straightforward IPR guidance;
VLE awareness;
responsive hosting and technical development;
tools to search across distributed repositories.

6 E-safety
6.1 Overview
After an introductory discussion about e-safety, this section summarises and exemplifies two
main e-safety issues pertaining to the management of repositories for learning resources. It
then lists around a dozen guidelines for repository owners.
6.2 Introduction
Less than 15% of the documents reviewed for this study make any reference to e-safety,
with most such references being minor. Our document review, therefore, provides an
insufficient basis for extracting a coherent list of issues for consideration by repository
owners, a meaningful range of exemplars, or detailed guidance for repository owners.
Consequently we present below the synthesis team’s ‘take’ on e-safety as it relates to the
management of repositories for learning materials.
Our overriding view, which squares strongly with that expressed in the November 2006
Becta/DfES Personalised Content Cross-Sector Mapping, is that the ‘Key to protecting
young people is educating them in how to protect themselves, through effective, integrated
approaches to internet safety education’ rather than by seeking to control the content and
services to which young people have access.
Becta uses the term ‘e-safety’ very broadly1, referring ‘to all fixed and mobile technologies
which children and young people might encounter now and in the future, which allow them
access to content and communications that could raise issues or pose risks to their
wellbeing and safety’ (emphasis added)’. Becta tabulates four classes of e-safety risk:
content, contact, commerce and culture, as shown below.
Content Contact Commerce Culture

Exposure to age Grooming using Exposure of Bullying via
inappropriate material communication minors to websites, mobile
Exposure to inaccurate technologies, inappropriate phones or other
or misleading leading to sexual commercial forms of
information assault and/or advertising communication
child prostitution Exposure to online device
Exposure to socially
unacceptable material gambling services Downloading of
such as that inciting Commercial and copyrighted
violence, hate or financial scams materials e.g.
intolerance music and films
Exposure to illegal
material, such as
images of child abuse
Whereas Becta’s broad definition and categorisation may be appropriate in relation to e-

safety risks overall, it is less helpful in the narrower field of repository management.
In relation to the tabulated categorisation, we are generally sceptical as to whether
‘downloading of copyrighted materials e.g. music and films’ or ‘exposure to inaccurate or
misleading information’ are e-safety issues at all; and we believe that for the purposes of this
1
Safeguarding Children in a Digital World -
http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=25933&page=1835 last accessed 10/2/2008

report a number of risks separately categorised under content, commerce and culture can be
treated for the purposes of this report under the heading ‘inappropriateness’.
Who is responsible for e-safety? We believe that primary responsibility to minimise risks to
learners rests with learning providers, by educating learners to be informed and vigilant
about the issues and/or by filtering and otherwise managing learners’ access to content and
services. Secondary responsibility lies with content producers to make sure that content
neither puts its intended users at risk, nor provides links to content or services that is likely to
put users at risk.
What responsibilities do repository owners have? To the extent that a repository, or the
content which it contains, might provide a user with access to ‘content and communications
that could raise issues or post risks to their wellbeing and safety’, there are two broad
classes of issues for those managing repositories:
• inappropriateness (including inappropriate or unlawful advertising)
• preventing risks of grooming or other inappropriate behaviour online (including
bullying).
We examine these issues in the next section, and provide some brief examples.
6.3 Issues
6.3.1 Inappropriateness (including inappropriate or unlawful advertising)
Like a physical library or museum, a repository may contain content whose suitability might
be judged to vary depending on the age or cultural sensitivities of users. Context is key and
one person's offensive image is another person's cultural artefact. There are many reputable
resources freely available that could cause concern if used in the wrong way.
Example. The British Museum website – in effect an open repository of descriptions of
artefacts – provides easy access to images such as this one:
Figure 5 Bronze phallic wind chime (tintinabulum), Roman, 1st century AD,
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/b/bronze_phallic_wind_
chime_tin.aspx or http://preview.tinyurl.com/28c9dv

In addition, a repository may provide access to content that itself contains links to content
that is not under the control of the repository owner, and which may be inappropriate.
Example. A learning resource about comparing train and bus fares might point to
TheTrainLine website - http://www.thetrainline.com/ - for booking train tickets. Users of the
TheTrainLine are presented with pop-up adverts for online gaming sites. Exposure to such
sites is said not to be appropriate for children and young people.2
6.3.2 Preventing risks of grooming or other inappropriate behaviour online (including

bullying)
This issue arises in two contexts.
Firstly, a repository which is designed to involve users in providing feedback, discussing
resources, etc. will, potentially, create opportunities for uncontrolled contact between users.
Example. A repository of educational games might allow dialogue between designers and
users, and between users.
Secondly, a repository may provide access to materials that have been designed to engage
users in on-line dialogue.
Example. A resource contains an activity that requires a learner to email a vendor for
information about a product. The learner does so, reveals him or herself to be a minor, and
puts him or herself at risk of grooming by the representative of the vendor to whom the
enquiry has been sent.
6.4 Exemplars
We are not aware of any concrete exemplars of e-safety issues being explicitly tackled by
repository operators, except in so far as the quality assurances processes of repositories
such as edna would be expected substantially to eliminate risks.

6.5.1 Help learners protect themselves
Provide by default a link to the UK node3 of the European Network of e-Safety Nodes4 on
resources or prominently on the interface from which the resources are accessed.
6.5.2 Provide advice to organisations making use of the repository

a) Provide a clear statement of the repository’s curation policies to enable learning
providers to decide whether or not to enable access.
b) Indicate whether or not the repository may contain resources that are unsuitable for
children and young people, or whether it contains resources that provide links to material
on the internet, or activities that make use of material on the internet.
c) Provide a clear statement of ‘take-down’ policies and of the process for a user to request
the taking down of a resource that is unsuitable.
2
To the extent that major sporting events are sponsored by online gambling businesses, it could be
argued (and our team shares this view) that preventing children and young people from being exposed
to such sites is an unrealistic and naïve endeavour.
3
http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/focus/uk.htm - last accessed 17/2/2008
4
http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/focus/uk.htm - last accessed 17/2/2008

d) Provide warnings that no warranty is given concerning the suitability of outbound links
from resources.
e) Advise that the repository should be accessed via whatever internet filtering system is
normally in place in the place of learning concerned.
f) Identify as such any content that is accessible to young people that is designed to
engage users in on-line dialogue, so as to alert teachers and parents to the issue.
6.5.3 Age-certify resources

Consider implementing an age-certification system in respect of certain classes of resource,
for example educational games, analogous to those applied to films, games and music.5
6.5.4 Control the upload process

Ensure that only authorised users are able to upload content into a repository and that an
auditable record is generated and retained showing which user has uploaded which
resource.
6.5.5 Control risks of grooming or other inappropriate behaviour online (including

bullying)
a) Only properly logged in and identified users should be able to engage in any online
communications supported by the repository itself.
b) Any repository that supports dialogue between users should retain an auditable record of
such dialogue.
c) Any repository that supports dialogue involving children and young people should be
designed with internet safety in the foreground, for example, by restricting chat to a
limited vocabulary and/or by archiving of chat transcripts.
d) Where content is designed to engage users in on-line dialogue and is accessible to
children and young people, then that content, and the dialogue mechanisms, should be
vetted to ensure that dialogue can take place safely.
5
This point of guidance, which we present with caution, is primarily directed at Becta and/or
organisations like BESA, as it is probably unrealistic for it to be acted on by repository owners alone.
If acted on, it would probably only be feasible in respect of substantial resources such as games.
Anyone considering this would want to follow up the W3C PICS work of a few years ago
http://www.w3.org/PICS/ which has been picked up in part by groups such as FOSI:
http://www.fosi.org/icra/ .

7 Accessibility
7.1 Overview
This section covers the aspects of accessibility which repository owners need to take into
account when setting up a repository. As a minimum, repository owners should be aware of the
legal responsibilities placed in the UK on all providers of digital content. The starting point for
this guidance is Becta’s document Making Accessible Software. {18} This defines a provider of
software and learning content as ‘anyone who supplies software tools or content – including
developers, publishers, resellers, commissioners and those who fund development work’.
Repository owners clearly fall into this group. In the context of accessibility, learner needs that
should be taken into account include visual impairment (including visual-perceptual problems),
learning difficulties, dyslexia and other reading difficulties, poor motor skills, hearing difficulties
and problems understanding or using English.
7.2 Introduction
There are three main dimensions of accessibility which need to be considered by repository
owners:
7.2.1 Accessibility of the resources contained in or described by the repository

Repository owners need to make an active decision about the requirements they place on
depositors of content, how these are communicated to both depositors and users, and how (if
at all) they are policed. Some examples of accessibility policies are provided below. Note that
most policies are based on guidelines and principles which relate primarily to web-based
content. It is important to remember that not all digital learning resources will be rendered via a
browser and therefore blanket statements like ‘must be WAI compliant’ may be inappropriate.
7.2.2 Use of metadata to describe the accessibility of resources

A good deal of effort has gone in to developing standardised ways of describing the
accessibility characteristics of learning resources. Recent activity under the ‘access for all’
banner has also focussed on describing user needs and preferences in a way which is
compatible with how resources are described, which should enable automated matching or
adaptation to take place. However, this is very much a ‘work in progress’ and practical
examples are hard to come by. Repository owners need to make a decision about whether
requiring depositors of materials to provide detailed descriptions of the accessibility of their
resources would act as a disincentive to participation, either because of the time required to
provide the data or because depositors are uncertain how to assess usability.
7.2.3 Accessibility of the repository’s user interface (if it has one)

This is the most straightforward aspect of accessibility for repository owners. There is
extensive support available to developers of websites about what constitutes an accessible
interface and several tools which web developers can use to assess accessibility. Much of
the guidance is based on the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative
(WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG). References to some of these sources of
support are provided below. WCAG v1 defines three levels of conformance – ‘A’, ‘AA’ and
‘AAA’. Repository owners should aim for conformance at ‘AAA’ level, with ‘AA’ level
conformance being the minimum requirement. Repository owners should also be aware of
WCAG v2, which is currently a draft for consultation, and about which there are strong
reservations in the web development community.

7.3 Issues
7.3.1 Providers of digital content, including repository owners, need to be aware of the
legal requirements in the UK covering both the supply and use of software by learners with
disabilities. Although the primary responsibility for ensuring accessibility lies with the
employer or educational institution, repository owners also need to be aware of the legal
requirements placed on these bodies, in order to ensure that their repository can be used
without putting the employer or educational institution at risk.
7.3.2 Becta’s Guidelines relate both to how a resource might be described to enable
practitioners properly to deploy it with learners with disabilities and, since learners (or staff)
with disabilities may also access or deposit resources using a repository, to the repository
itself.
7.3.3 Increasing use of multimedia content within digital learning resources is a challenge
for accessibility. Repository owners should be aware of the need for, and encourage
production of, alternative ways of rendering multimedia content including transcripts of
podcasts, videos, etc.
7.3.4 If content is designed to be delivered via a mobile device (e.g., a mobile telephone or
PDA) then this presents yet another challenge for accessibility.
7.3.5 There is a risk that adopting ‘flashy’, modern looking user interfaces may restrict
accessibility. Accessible interface design should accommodate the visually appealing with
the functionality of accessibility, bearing in mind that the more use is made of a particular
interface, the less welcome are those of its features that are designed to attract the first-time
user.
7.3.6 It is important to remember that accessibility can be an issue for all users, not just
users with disabilities. Some aspects of a user’s IT environment can lead to accessibility
problems, sometimes referred to as ‘quasi-disabilities’. These include:
• Slow internet connection
• Old browser version
• Non-standard access device, such as a handheld or OLPC XO
• Missing plug-ins
• No speakers
• Eyes busy / Hands busy
• Noisy environment.
Accessible design should consider whether these factors are likely to be an issue for the
target audience of a digital learning resource.
7.4 Exemplars
7.4.1 Repository User Interfaces
South West Grid For Learning (http://www.swgfl.org.uk) is an example of a Regional
Broadband Consortium site which was assessed by the DfES Channel Review as
conforming to WCAG at AAA level. Other related sites worth looking at for examples of
accessible web interfaces include the BBC Schools (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools) and
Whizz Kids (http://www.whizz-kids.org.uk), which has a primary focus on access for disabled
learners.

7.4.2 Repository Accessibility Policies
MERLOT’s accessibility policy (http://taste.merlot.org/accessibilitypolicy.html) is a good
example of a policy set up specifically to comply with current US legislation in the area. The
policy makes it clear that MERLOT does not control the development of the educational
content which can be accessed via the portal.
The Learning Federation makes learning resources available to schools in Australia and
New Zealand. It has a range of technical policies that suppliers must sign up to, including a
requirement that content produced and/or licensed by TLF is accessible
(http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/verve/_resources/accessibility_specification.pdf) .
This specification is compatible with W3C WAI guidelines.
7.4.3 Accessibility examples and tools

edna’s accessibility help page shows some examples of good practice,
(http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/help/accessibility)
The accessED tool has been developed by education.au to assist educators creating content
for learning management systems and websites. It differs from most other tools in that it is
specifically designed to look at accessibility of content within the context of a learning
management system and can be used in private and secure environments such as intranets,
(http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/pid/573).
7.4.4 Use of accessibility metadata

University of Toronto’s Inclusive Learning Exchange (http://www.barrierfree.ca/tile/ ) uses
‘Access For All’ principles to match user preferences/ requirements with technical
capabilities of learning resources.
MERLOT has an option to search for ‘section 508 compliant’ resources in the advanced user
interface. However, only 266 of around 19,000 resources have this option checked, which
suggests that suppliers are reluctant to make claims about their materials and would rather
not use this optional element.
The Learning Federation’s metadata application profile contains an ‘access profile’ element
and is referenced in their accessibility specification (see link above).

7.5.1 Be aware of the legal requirements
A repository may be deemed to be a ‘provider’ of digital content. As such, repository owners
need to be aware of the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act and the Special
Educational Needs and Disabilities Act. Becta’s booklet Making Accessible Software{18}
contains a useful six-paragraph legal summary which is good starting point.
7.5.2 Have an explicit accessibility policy for content

Make the requirements that you are placing on depositors of content explicit. Use the
policies listed in the examples above as a starting point but make sure that your policy is
appropriate for your users. Remember that it is a balancing act between setting the
requirements too low, which might exclude significant groups of users from using a resource,
and setting them too high, in which case a resource might be excluded which might benefit
the vast majority of learners.

7.5.3 Give practical advice to contributors of resources
Becta’s booklet ‘Making Accessible Software’ contains a table of 16 Guidelines aimed at
software developers, including a description what each guideline means in practice. Ensure
that contributors to your repository are aware of this guidance.
7.5.4 Encourage contributors of resources to provide metadata about accessibility

Where possible, descriptions of digital learning resources should include relevant information
on the accessibility features that are included or the way in which the resource can be used
with assistive technologies. Where a digital learning resource has been designed to address
specific needs, for example to support learners with dyslexia, this should also be made
explicit.
7.5.5 Encourage reviews of resources which focus on accessibility features

In a similar way to Which consumer magazines, which have ‘group tests’ assessing a range
of products against the same criteria, consider using accessibility specialists to provide
feedback on the accessibility features of a range of resources within the repository. Ensure
that this is done in a positive way, focussing on good practice rather than simply criticising
resources which fail to meet existing guidelines.
7.5.6 Practise what you preach

Make sure that the user interface of your repository meets at least WCAG v1 AA criteria and
be aware of the new WCAG v2 criteria, especially those which relate to ‘rich content’ (WAI-
ARIA).
7.5.7 Test your stuff

Use the wide range of testing tools that are available, for example
http://www.cynthiasays.com/ to test WCAI conformance to level A and
http://www.browsercam.com/ to test that content works satisfactorily on different browsers
and access devices.
7.6 References, standards, specifications and guidelines

Up to date links to all relevant documents can be found on the accessibility section of
Becta’s industry website (http://www.becta.org.uk/industry/content/accessibility).
Although primarily aimed at post compulsory education, the guidance and resources
provided by the JISC TechDis service are also very valuable (http://www.techdis.ac.uk/).
The accessibility guidelines produced by the Irish National Disability Authority contain a
useful section on accessibility of (non web-based) applications software
(http://accessit.nda.ie/it-accessibility-guidelines/application-software).
The latest information on the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility initiative
(WAI) is available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/.
IMS and ISO are currently aligning their work on accessibility for e-learning. SO is producing
tFCD 24751-2, Individualized Adaptability and Accessibility in E-learning, Education and
Training Part 2: Access For All Personal Needs and Preferences Statement which builds on
existing IMS work. The latest publicly available versions of the IMS Access for All and
Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP are available from the IMS website
(http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html).

8 Quality
8.1 Overview
This section covers aspects of quality that repository managers should consider when
developing, populating and maintaining repositories of digital learning content. The most
important areas connected with the quality of digital repositories are those addressed by this
report as a whole, so this section focuses on additional approaches to quality.
It is recommended that repository managers produce clear quality principles and explain
how they are going to apply them both to the repository itself and also to the content of the
repository. Some suggestions based upon Becta Quality Principles are provided.
8.2 Introduction
‘Quality Assurance is the planned and systematic activities put in place to ensure quality
requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled. Document all processes.’ ISO 9000:
2000 Quality Assurance Definition
Quality and success are usually linked together. Managers need to consider the quality of
two main aspects of their repositories:
• The repository itself – for example, is it accessible and easy to use, robust and
interoperable or how will it be sustained?
• The content of the repository – for example, how is the content checked or
reviewed, is it suitable for the audience, is it well designed, is it checked regularly to
see if it is still current?
Given that ‘we lack understanding about the use and eventual effectiveness of educational
digital learning repositories and resources in instructional settings’ (Recker et al. 2004) any
measures of the quality of repositories and their content will not be perfect. However, there
are some general principles that can be applied.
8.3 Issues
8.3.1 Lack of strategy
A major issue is the apparent lack of strategy or documentation of how the quality of
repositories is planned, measured and sustained. The Becta ‘Resource discovery services
for the teaching workforce in England – discussion document’ {5} indicated that many search
results don’t offer any information on quality of resources and it is unclear what quality
control mechanisms are used by the repositories studied.
Measurement of quality can be very subjective and it is necessary to balance the resources
required to oversee and monitor quality with the benefits of that oversight. It is possible to
take a view that if resources in repositories are used and things work then there is no need
to have special provision for managing quality, as it is a waste of time and energy. However,
being able to understand if and how far a repository and the resources within meet the
needs of the various stakeholders has to be valuable when considering how to develop or
improve a repository.

8.3.2 Responsibility
It is useful to understand who is responsible for each aspect of the repository. It can be
assumed that the repository itself is the responsibility of the providing organisation. For the
content, the managers of repositories can apply criteria to uploading of the resources or,
more often, the responsibility for the quality of the resources is passed to those providing
them. The Calibrate {23} and MELT {29} projects, for example, currently rely on each
participating ministry of education to be responsible for the quality of the content that it
contributes to the federation.
Others take a more proactive approach, for example the Learning Federation has a
substantial review process as part of the development cycle where user testing and
acceptance testing are built in. Teachers in selected schools are included in these cycles
and the compliance with quality procedures is contractually required.
In the Education Network Australia – edna – {27} the quality of content and metadata is high,
but the process is time consuming and repetitive. All resources catalogued in the edna
metadata repository are selected and evaluated by edna staff according to their collection
policy. There are no contributions currently from general users. They are investigating ways
to automate this process wherever possible, although, as has been pointed out, assessing
quality of content is difficult and can’t be done in a mechanistic way. {11}
A slightly different, possibly complementary, approach is to enable peer reviewing to provide
an indication of quality. The MELT project {29} is developing two measures of quality. The first
is a measure based on what users actually do, in particular whether they bookmark a
learning object. The second is a rating system so that users can rank resources.
8.4 Exemplars
8.4.1 Overview
Not many of the sources reviewed referred to quality explicitly. It is of course possible to
produce high quality repositories with excellent content without necessarily having a specific
quality plan, but there are some very good examples of plans below. They vary in scope
from the generic principles provided by Becta, through to more detailed and specific criteria.
The last example is work in progress in the Quality for Reuse project.
8.4.2 Becta principles

The ‘Quality principles for digital learning resources’ produced by Becta {19} are generic
principles intended to be applied to the learning resources themselves rather than
repositories. It is possible, though, to apply some of them to repositories.
They are intended to be used as a basis for the development of supporting materials. These
will assist practitioners in assessing the fitness for purpose of resources, and designers and
developers in the production of high-quality resources. The principles have been developed
in consultation with a wide range of partners and organisations, including academic
researchers, industry developers and educational practitioners and managers.
There are 16 principles divided into two groups of core pedagogic principles and design
principles. The former address the processes and conditions under which successful
learning can take place. The latter cover issues such as resource design, accessibility and
interoperability.

8.4.3 Australian Government Information Office
The Australian Government Information Office (AGIMO) has produced a set of ‘Better
practice checklists’, http://www.agimo.gov.au/practice/delivery/checklists.
These are not specifically aimed at repositories but some are applicable. There is a total of
232 pages, which is perhaps too much for most use cases, but they are provided as 20 easy
to use downloadable booklets each covering a particular topic. Each one has a simple to
follow structure and has sets of simple checklists to follow. Some of the topics that may be
relevant include Providing Forms Online, Website Navigation, Use of Metadata for Web
Resources, Implementing a Content Management System, Website Usage Monitoring and
Evaluation, and Implementing an Effective Website Search Facility.
The summary checklist for Website Navigation, for example, is as follows:
• Consider the Government’s guidance on ‘consistent user experience’
• Ensure that users can determine what site they are on
• Ensure that users can tell where they are in the site
• Ensure that users can tell where to go next
• Provide several options for finding information
• Apply consistent navigation methods throughout the site
• Use text rather than graphics for navigation elements
• Describe text links effectively
• Avoid pop-up windows or new browser windows
• Consider the use of frames carefully
• Ensure that navigational schemes and elements are accessible to people with
disabilities and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
8.4.4 OCLC and CRL

The Online Computer Library Center and the Center for Research Libraries have published a
thorough and comprehensive guidance document, ‘Trustworthy Repositories Audit &
Certification: Criteria and Checklist' http://www.oclc.org/research/announcements/2007-03-
12.htm. This predominantly involved US-based organisations but includes some from the
UK. It is intended that this will eventually become an ISO standard.
The document has a set of criteria to facilitate the certification of digital repositories, but is
expected to have a number of uses including repository planning, periodic internal
assessment, analysis of services and objective third-party evaluation of any repository or
archiving service.
The following are considered as the minimum set of evidence that should be documented for
a repository:
• Organisational Infrastructure
o Contingency plans, succession plans, escrow arrangements (as
appropriate)
o Definition of designated community(ies), and policy relating to service
levels

o Policies relating to legal permissions
o Policies and procedures relating to feedback
o Financial procedures
o Policies/procedures relating to challenges to rights (only if likely to be
needed)
• Digital Object Management
o Procedures related to ingest
o Process for testing understandability
o Preservation strategies
o Storage/migration strategies
o Policy for recording access actions
o Policy for access
• Technologies, Technical Infrastructure and Security
o Processes for media change
o Change management process
o Critical change test process
o Security update process
o Process to monitor required changes to hardware
o Process to monitor required changes to software
o Disaster plans.
It is unlikely that all of the checklist items would be useful for digital repositories for Becta’s
communities but they are a good starting point to select from and do highlight the range and
complexity of a thorough quality assurance process.
8.4.5 MERLOT
When content is contributed to MERLOT it goes through a review process
<http://taste.merlot.org/peerreviewprocess.html>. An initial filtering of content to be reviewed
is conducted by two experts in the field according to the evaluation criteria
http://taste.merlot.org/evaluationcriteria.html which include Quality, Potential Effectiveness
and Ease of Use. The review results and user ratings can be used as ranking criteria in the
results of a search. Below is a sample of a single row of results returned from a MERLOT
search. Users can quickly identify high value materials by peer review ratings, user
comments and by seeing how many personal collections include this content etc. They can
drill down to greater levels of detail on the materials through active links. Clicking the title
provides more detailed information on the content and author and also provides the link to
the actual content.
Peer Review
DNA from the Beginning
Author: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Comments (14)avg:
DNA from the Beginning is an animated tutorial on DNA, genes and Personal Collections (175)
heredity. The science behind each... Assignments (12)
Type: Simulation Author Snapshot
Date Added: Apr 11, 2000

Figure 6 A sample of a single row of results returned from a MERLOT search
There is a Faculty Awards program and other forms of recognition that are of value to the
contributor. In this model the contributors also gain value by having materials reviewed and
the fear of review is substantially removed so the overall quality of materials increases.
There is also assistance for contributors to improve the content through the review process.
8.4.6 Q4R
Quality for Reuse best practice http://www.q4r.org/ is a collaborative project that includes the
GLOBE partners and a research team from the Télé-Université, l’université à distance,
UQAM http://www.teluq.uquebec.ca/ in Canada.
The project is work in progress and includes these outputs:
• a website
• links to a repository of resources including those created by the project
• a wiki that includes input from the GLOBE partners on their ideas of quality assurance
strategies and best practices.
‘The emergence of LOR initiatives, mainly since 2001, has underlined a set of major
scientific and technical problems that needed to be solved to make LORs a useful reality.
The collaboration between researchers and the major LOR initiatives in Canada, USA,
Europe, Australia and Japan will provide new insights and help propose specifications for
innovative educational processes that can be shared and adapted across continents in spite
of cultural and/or linguistic barriers.
The Quality for Reuse, Q4R, project aims at fulfilling this vision by providing tools,
techniques, procedures, principles and strategies assisting in implementing quality
assurance practices for high quality LOR. Further, to fully satisfy this need for quality, we will
propose a Q4R Workflow model based on our partners’ Best Practices as well as our own
research and experience.’
This four-phased project aims at elaborating a workflow model showing when, where and
how to best integrate quality assurance strategies:
Phase I: Document Best Practices of GLOBE Partners and set up website and wiki
Phase II: Invite LOR owners to participate by filling out the Best Practice
Questionnaire, analyze data and extract valuable strategies
Phase III: Elaborate an interactive workflow model and invite participants to validate
its usefulness
Phase IV: Test the Quality Assurance model.
In addition, they aim at populating the Q4R Repository with valuable Q4R Strategies,
Instruments and Documents.
The basic model they use is as follows:

Figure 7 The Quality for Reuse, Q4R project
In the project a quality assurance strategy is implemented to improve effectiveness,
efficiency and flexibility of learning objects as well as proper storing and retrieval strategies.
To realise this goal, the project proposes policies, guidelines, evaluation grids and
checklists, peer review, automated metadata capturing and verification as well as user
feedback.

8.5.1 Define the scope and purpose
The purpose and scope of the repository will obviously have a bearing on how to produce
and apply quality measures. It is therefore important for repository managers to clarify:
• What content is going to be included?
• Who is the audience?
• How are the resources to be accessed?
• For how long will the repository exist and be maintained?
8.5.2 Plan a quality strategy

Quality management should be part of the planning process rather than added on at the
end. A set of guidelines can be produced based, for example, on the main Becta quality
principles. Those that mostly apply to the development of the repository itself are:
• Robustness and support
• Interoperability
• Inclusion and access
• Learner engagement
• Innovative approaches
• Ease of use
• Testing and verification
• Effective communication.

It is not the purpose of this report to make recommendations about how digital resources are
judged or how their quality is managed. However, it is important for repository managers to
have a strategy for dealing with the content. The main Becta principles that apply to the
content are:
• Digital learning resource design
• Human-computer interaction
• Quality of assets
• Accessibility
• Match to the curriculum
• Effective learning
• Assessment to support learning
• Robust summative assessment.
Developing and publishing a quality strategy will help ensure that issues have been
considered and that they are communicated to all the stakeholders.
8.5.3 Clarify responsibility

The responsibility for the quality of resources should be made clear. This may be by peer
review or undertaken by the repository managers.
Those who can use a repository to store and manage collections of learning resources
should be clear about what it is they are accepting and how they will share with others. They
should be clear about their responsibilities for the quality of the resources they are
submitting.
Refusing to accept sub-standard resources is one mechanism for maintaining high quality.
Responsibility for this can be assigned to reviewers to decide to accept or reject a
submission so that only accepted submissions are published and made discoverable by
others. Each submitted resource can be assigned to a reviewer who makes sure that the
resource reaches the necessary quality criteria before it is published. This approach does of
course have resource implications.
Publicly funded collections can apply contractual obligations to quality standards as part of
the development funding. Submitters of content can be encouraged to submit their content to
a peer review process, though this may require different incentives.
8.5.4 Think about sustainability

Adequate resource should be allowed to routinely review, remove or amend content for the
expected duration of a repository.
8.6 References
Becta (2007). Quality principles for digital learning resources, July 2006.
Recker, M.M., Dorward, J. and Nelson, L.M. (2004). Discovery and use of online learning
resources: Case study findings. Educational Technology & Society, 7 (2): 93-104, Apr 2004.

9 IPRs and copyright
9.1 Overview
This section covers the intellectual property (IP) issues which repository owners need to take
into account when setting up a repository. The key types of intellectual property risks that
may be found in digital learning resource repositories include:
• copyright infringement and related matters, including moral rights;
• infringement of the database right;
• infringement of design rights;
• infringement of performing rights through access to broadcasts, sound recordings
and films
As the most significant aspect of IP relevant to this document will be copyright, the issue of
managing copyright is the primary issue addressed here. Copyright risks may be assessed
according to the likelihood of their occurrence, the likely consequences and the acceptability
of their occurrence. Where risks are likely to occur, or their occurrence would have
significant impact on the repository, then remedial measures will be required, including the
development of clearly stated policy provisions. Much of the risk for a repository can be
handled by developing a policy framework which provides for appropriate licensing
mechanisms for deposited material and any other contributions, given the nature and scope
of a particular repository, as well as processes to ameliorate the effect of any copyright
infringements. However, the processes of licensing and risk management have to be
balanced against the need to encourage individuals and institutions to engage with a
repository. The key aim for repository owners should thus be to develop both licensing and
risk amelioration processes which are as simple and transparent as possible to those
wishing to deposit or access repository materials.
9.2 Introduction
There are five factors that will need to be considered by repository owners in dealing with
IPR (intellectual property rights) and copyright issues:
9.2.1 Handling IPR/copyright risks from the repository perspective

Repository owners will need to have a clear understanding of the copyright risks that their
particular repository faces; this will require a careful risk assessment as early as possible in
the developmental process. It is also essential that repository owners ensure that processes
are in place to ensure that risk management is an ongoing issue, and that responsibility for
undertaking such assessment, as well as developing and administrating methods of handling
any risks identified, is clearly located within the staffing structure of the repository.
9.2.2 Current repository licensing trends

In terms of trends in existing practice in addressing copyright issues, there is without doubt a
strong groundswell of support among stakeholders in digital learning resource repositories
for the adoption of the type of clear and concise copyright licensing options provided by the
Creative Commons (CC) project, wherever possible. What is also clear, however, is that:
• using CC licences still requires at least a basic understanding, on behalf of both
licensor depositors and licensee users, of how copyright licensing works, and what is
being granted (or not) by the licensor, and such knowledge is by no means universal;

• it is often the case that IP rights in digital learning resources are vested in institutions,
and not in individual teachers/academics; using those resources may thus require an
institutional commitment rather than an individual one;
• the licence options available under the CC do not necessarily provide a complete
solution to a repository’s needs, e.g. if some licensors want more specific/restrictive
terms (as is the case, for example, with the BCCampus licence arrangements);
• even if CC licences (or variants thereof) are used, there remains the issue of how to
deal with the results of the unintended or unsuspected incorporation of unlicensed
third party material within digital learning resources.
As such, CC licences are not a panacea for all deposit and access-related copyright issues
arising in repositories (Korn & Oppenheim 2006). Depending on local or sectoral factors,
digital learning object repositories may be better served by variants based on CC licences
or, indeed, entirely different licensing models. Early assessment of those factors will play a
key role in aiding repository owners in choosing an appropriate licensing mechanism.
9.2.3 Simple copyright licensing processes for deposit

Obtaining a viable set of quality materials through individual or institutional deposit is a vital
objective for any repository. It is important, therefore, that processes designed to facilitate
copyright compliance, and to ameliorate risk, do not have the undesired consequence of
deterring depositors. The nature of the digital learning objects to be deposited, as well as
local and sectoral factors, will influence the willingness of would-be depositors to engage
with repository processes. It will be important for repository owners to assess the likely
factors that will affect willingness to deposit, and to tailor their processes accordingly, for
example:
• a requirement on depositors to create rights metadata for deposited materials would
until recently have been seen as a negative factor in encouraging deposit; however,
increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as ‘tag clouds’, may mean that
practitioners are more willing to accept the benefits of metadata usage, and thus
some additional overhead to deposit processes;
• providing a small set of licence choices from which depositors can choose will
reduce confusion, but may also restrict the number of individual or institutional
depositors who are able or willing to contribute under the sets of licence terms
available to them.
Part of this process will involve identifying areas in which a repository can enhance
understanding through provision of a tailored range of information on licensing, and
outreach mechanisms such as guidance and guidelines on IPR for depositors.
9.2.4 Simple copyright licensing processes for access

‘If we build it, they will come’ often appears to be an underlying conviction for those planning
repositories. However, simply providing access to digital learning objects is unlikely to result
in significant uptake and use where potential users are uncertain about the consequences of
using such material. Just as with depositors, it is important that processes designed to
facilitate copyright compliance, and ameliorate risk, do not have the undesired consequence
of deterring access and reuse. Repository owners will need an understanding of the factors
that are likely to attract or deter would-be users of repository materials, and to have a
strategy for addressing those factors, for example:

• Most of those seeking to use digital learning objects are unlikely to want to have to
spend significant amounts of time working out what they can and can’t do under the
licence applicable to those objects. Use of quick mechanisms for identifying
acceptable licences, such as icons representing key licence conditions, will help to
reduce both confusion and time overheads.
Here, too, a repository can increase its accessibility and value to would-be users by
providing a tailored range of information on licensing conditions ranging from short
explanations to full licence agreements.
9.2.5 Future-proofing
It is clear from review of existing practices and literature that the role of most digital learning
resource repositories is unlikely to be a static one. Even as new repositories are being
created, their owners (or their users) are already seeking new ways to add value to their
content and/or services. As the functions of repositories become more diverse (e.g., by
seeking to incorporate both non-commercial and commercial digital content, or by
incorporating forms of academic peer review of digital learning resources, such as
commentary or reviews), their owners’ strategies for handling the resulting copyright issues
will inevitably become more complex. As a result, it is likely to be necessary for would-be
repository owners to be planning and implementing a medium to long-term copyright
strategy even before the repository is established. The range of approaches to copyright and
licensing adopted by existing digital resource repositories, in support of particular business
models, highlights the importance of addressing the copyright issues of a repository owner’s
desired or potential business model at an early stage.
9.3 Issues
The following issues have been identified from a wide range of sources that document
current practice.
9.3.1 Information gathering and risk assessments (deposit and access)

The repositories that handle the copyright/IPR issues arising from their activities most
effectively are those which scope the issues pertaining to their planned repository well in
advance of launch. This allows them sufficient time to:
• access and learn from relevant experience derived from existing repositories and
from other related educational and non-educational projects;
• identify particular issues relevant to:
o the nature of their repository or referatory
o the specific type of materials they intend to accept
o the particular educational sector or sectors they intend to serve
o the intellectual property regime of their jurisdiction
o the prevailing political and social circumstances;
• assess key issues of concern to depositors and accessors and to develop strategies
to reduce the impact of those concerns on the use of the repository.
Repositories that have undertaken a considered review of their operating environment are
better placed to apply an appropriate and efficient level of risk management. Whilst a risk
management process cannot guarantee a successful copyright/IPR strategy immediately

(even those repositories that have spent considerable time on backgrounding and risk
assessment may find that their initial solutions are incomplete or over-cautious), it does
provide a basis from which later copyright/IPR policy changes for both deposit and access
can be adopted in a structured and coherent fashion.
9.3.2 Choice of licence regime (deposit and access)

The choice of licence regime is highly likely to be influenced by the outcomes of the
backgrounding and risk management processes. As a result of the different outcomes of
those processes (or the extent to which these processes were actually carried out), there are
a range of licensing regimes already in use by existing repositories. There are essentially
four decisions to make with regard to the licensing regime:
• For deposits:
o Is the repository going to target individual-level contributions or institutional-
level contributions?
• For access:
o Is the repository going to grant access at the level of individual users,
institutions, or key educational sectoral bodies (e.g., national or regional
government education departments)?
• For both:
o Is the repository going to act as a licensor (by taking an assignment of
copyright from the depositor and licensing to users), licensee (by taking a
licence of copyright from the depositor, and sub-licensing to users) or
unlicensed intermediary (by providing the mechanism through which users
can obtain a licence of copyright from the depositor)?
o Are the licences to be used going to be unmodified Creative Commons
licences, bespoke licences (i.e., licences based on terms specific to the
repository), or a combination of the two (e.g., a Creative Common licence with
an additional clause that restricts use to a particular educational sector)?
It is clear that the choices made will affect the complexity of the licensing process, the
likelihood of depositors making materials available and the willingness of users to access
and use the materials. There is a balance to be struck between a regime that meets the
interests of depositors, facilitates the goals of the repository and encourages reuse of digital
learning materials. It is not clear from current exemplars that there is one optimal approach
to reaching this balance, not least because those three factors are likely to differ between
repositories.
9.3.3 Confusion over copyright ownership (deposit)

There remains a great deal of confusion over who owns copyright in teachers’ materials.
This confusion largely derives from a widespread failure to:
Provide coherent and concise guidance on, and explanation of, the basic rules of
copyright in the educational context, i.e., that in the UK an individual who creates an
original work will own the copyright in that work UNLESS:
o the work is created in the course of their employment (noting that where,
when, and on whose equipment, the work is made is usually irrelevant to the

determination of what is entailed by ‘in the course of their employment’), when
it will belong to their employer, unless otherwise agreed;
o there is a contractual agreement that the rights in the work will belong to a
third party; or
o there is legislative or other legal provision that the rights in the work will
belong to a third party.
Formulate clear moral and ethical standards for acceptable ways of using/reusing
materials that have been created by teachers, by their peers, by senior staff and by
other third parties, such that creators of original digital learning objects receive
appropriate recognition of their contribution, even where this is not strictly required by
law. A comparable standard would be the degree of opprobrium and the academic
consequences generally accorded to the plagiarism of original research, which itself
may not involve copyright/IPR infringement, but which is still considered a significant
moral/ethical breach.
Where there is poor understanding of the law, and particularly where there are no accepted
cultural/administrative methods of reinforcing moral and ethical standards, levels of trust
decline, and individuals are more likely to resort to asserting legal claims (their ‘rights’) or
simply withholding materials, both of which reduce the likelihood of deposit with repositories
and make reuse of materials less likely (Charlesworth et al 2007).
9.3.4 Confusion over licence terms (deposit and access)

While a repository may choose a particular licensing regime, including the use of a particular
licence or set of licences, the issue remains that many depositors and users remain unaware
of, or confused about, the implications of the terms of those licences. This may lead to
depositors:
• choosing a licence which places more restrictions on the use of their material than
they intended
• accidentally permitting uses of their material (such as commercial use) that they did
not intend
• not depositing material because they do not want to take the time to work out what
the licence or licences permit
• depositing unsuitable material (e.g., material in which a third party holds rights, and
which has not been appropriately licensed for deposit).
Equally users may:
• use material for purposes for which they are not licensed
• not use material because they think the licence is more restrictive than in fact it is
• not use material because they can’t decide what is, and is not, being licensed.
Making the licence choice, for both depositors and users, as simple as possible in the
circumstances is thus an important aim for repository owners. Techniques for achieving this
include:
• adopting a single licence for all deposits (this has the benefit of simplicity, but the
downside of all ‘one-size-fits-all‘ approaches – one size usually doesn’t fit all);

• adopting multiple licences, but providing a range of materials explaining in varying
levels of detail what the licences mean (this provides more options for depositors, but
places more overhead on the deposit process, and may confuse or put off users);
• using icons to identify the key licence terms applicable to particular materials. This
has the advantage of brevity and simplicity, but requires a licensing system whose
terms can be broken down into icon form, and, ideally, different repositories should
use the same or a similar range of icons to indicate the same terms – this is not
uniformly reflected in current practice (see Appendix A);
• ensuring that depositors are encouraged (or mandated) to complete ownership and
licensing metadata within the repository’s metadata records when depositing material
(views are mixed as to whether this will be a significant deterrent to potential
depositors – there is a growing belief that it will not as use of metadata elsewhere
becomes more common).
9.3.5 Risk management processes (organisational)

An issue which can be derived from the background information from many of the existing
repositories, but which is often passed over, or ignored, in the sources and surrounding
literature is a key organisational one. Dealing consistently and effectively with the
copyright/IPR issues raised by a repository, both at start-up and during operation, will require
the clear allocation of responsibility for those determining and addressing those issues within
the repository’s management team. That responsibility will span both the deposit and access
functions of the repository, as changes to the copyright/IPR policy on the one side will almost
inevitably have repercussions on the other. It is apparent from the operation of the larger
repositories that effective copyright/IPR risk management is key to establishing and
maintaining both depositor and user trust in the reliability of a repository.
9.3.6 Policy framework/holistic approach (organisational)

The final issue derived from the materials reviewed is the desirability of taking a holistic view
of the copyright/IPR issues. Building a flexible copyright/IPR policy framework, based on the
initial background and risk assessment, which contains clear and documented processes for
deposit and access management, policy and process audit and risk amelioration, and which
incorporates the ability to effect coherent change management in the light of shifts in
environmental factors, will be essential to long-term sustainability.
9.4 Exemplars
There are many exemplars from the sources identified in the Literature Review. However, it
is important to emphasise that no ‘one-size-fits-all-solution’ for dealing with copyright/IPR
issues emerges from an overview of either the primary or secondary sources. What does
emerge is that there is a ‘toolkit’ of possible policies and processes from which future
repository owners can draw in constructing their own copyright/IPR strategy. A guide to the
primary considerations for this process are laid out in the detailed recommendations below.
9.4.1 Information gathering and risk assessments

The nature of the process does not lend itself to identifying a specific primary exemplar, but
several repositories have spent a significant time gathering information about their target
depositors and users, the environmental factors at play, and different approaches to
copyright/IPR licensing and risk management. Jorum, for example, spent a great deal of time
working on copyright issues, in particular determining the most appropriate licensing

framework for their circumstances. New repositories should be able to reduce their own
information-gathering and risk management assessment processes by building on and/or
learning from pre-existing work by Jorum and other repositories such as AEShareNet and
MERLOT.
9.4.2 Choice of licence regime

As noted above, there are a range of licensing regimes already in use. Diagrammatic
examples for a basic licensing model (repository as non-licensing intermediary), the Jorum
model (repository as licensee/sub-licensor) and the Learning Federation (repository as either
licensor or repository as licensee/sub-licensor) can be found in Appendix B. Examples of
uses of different types of licence within a licensing regime include:
• Connexions and Maricopa Learning eXchange use basic Creative Commons
attribution licenses.
• BC Campus permits the use of either a Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution
licence or a BC Commons licence. The Creative Commons licence allows others to
use, copy, distribute and make derivative works globally. The BC Commons licence
is similar but provides for reuse in the context of local consortia where sharing and
modification take place only within BC’s public post-secondary system.
• Jorum uses a bespoke single licence (only institutions can sign the deposit licence).
• AEShareNet uses a set of six licence variations (see Appendix C).
9.4.3 Confusion over copyright ownership

Most repositories provide some form of further information about copyright and licensing for
would-be depositors and users. The most expansive set of information, on both general
copyright issues and the licences used by the repository, is that provided by AEShareNet.
Repositories, such as Connexions and Maricopa Learning eXchange, which have less
diverse licensing arrangements, tend to provide less information, and often use existing
alternative general copyright information sources, such as the Creative Commons website.
Some very useful work has been carried out with regard to copyright education and learning
objects in the FE/HE sector by two projects, Trust DR and Rights and Rewards, and the
reports and deliverables from those projects are a valuable resource, particularly Trust DR’s
Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Digital Learning Materials: A development pack for
institutional repositories. (Casey et al 2007)
9.4.4 Confusion over licence terms

In terms of tackling potential confusion about the licence terms used by the repository,
AEShareNet provides the most information. It also uses multi-level licence explanations, with
a short explanation in tabular form (see Appendix C) as well as longer discussions of the
implications of each licence, for those who want a more in-depth analysis.
Several of the repositories make use of, or refer to, the Creative Commons icon set. This
consists of six icons which outline the key points of the main Creative Commons licences.
AEShareNet uses its own set of icons to provide a rapid identification of key licence terms
(see Appendix A). It is perhaps unfortunate that, as with licences, there is scope for
uncontrolled icon proliferation if a significant number of repositories decide to produce their
own icon sets. If this occurs, it will inevitably dilute the advantages of rapid recognition of
licence terms currently found with CC licences.

9.4.5 Risk management processes
While an effective licensing process can help to avoid copyright/IPR problems, it cannot
entirely remove the legal risks from repository operation. Additional processes can be used
to reinforce a risk management strategy, such as:
• the inclusion of warranties into depositor agreements, whereby depositors are held
accountable to the repository for depositing material which infringes the rights of third
parties. This mechanism is used by Jorum;
• notice and takedown schemes, through which third parties can request that a
repository remove material because it infringes their rights. This reduces the potential
liability of the repository by permitting expedited removal of risky material. This
mechanism is used by Jorum, AEShareNet and Connexions;
• grievance procedures, through which third parties can seek to reach an agreement
with the repository over how infringements of their rights are to be deal with – this
usually involves some form of mediation. This mechanism is used by Jorum.
9.4.6 Policy framework/holistic approach

Several of the larger repositories clearly identify the individual or individuals with
responsibility for oversight of their copyright/IPR processes, including Jorum, Connexions
and the Learning Federation. Others do not make this as apparent, which may cause
problems in risk management, for example, if a third party believes their materials are being
infringed, but cannot identify the appropriate person(s) with whom to register their complaint.
Both Jorum and AEShareNet have continued to work on their copyright/IPR processes
following their initial risk assessment and continue to develop their policy framework, with the
aim of ensuring broad policy and process integration. The result of this ongoing development
is that they have established a significant degree of future-proofing inasmuch as they have
the policies and processes in place to continue to evolve their copyright/IPR strategy in the
longer term.

9.5.1 Risk management strategy
Recommendation: (1) It is recommended that repository owners undertake a legal risk
assessment process, and proactively develop an IPR risk management strategy, prior to a
repository’s implementation, and ideally during the early stages of project development. This
assessment should identify and quantify the likely impact of potential risks, e.g., copyright
infringement by both those depositing material and those using the material in the repository.
Rationale: Early assessment of the likelihood, and potential impact, of key legal risks will
permit repository owners to develop appropriate strategies for avoiding or ameliorating their
effects before significant development work is undertaken. This will reduce the chances that
significant changes to the repository itself, or to the repository owner’s administrative
practices, are required late in development, or when the repository is ‘live’.
Commentary: Failure to properly explore the key legal risks may result in failure to take
appropriate action to avoid liability for breaches of IPR or other content liability issues. Such
failures may result in expensive ‘retrofitting’ costs, loss of funding or institutional support, and
reluctance on the part of depositors or users to engage with a repository. On the other hand,

while there is a need to take a prudent approach, a proper risk assessment will provide
repository owners with the confidence to avoid being excessively risk averse.
Examples of existing or prior practice: The BIOMED Image Archive at the University of
Bristol neglected to undertake a legal risk assessment prior to its establishment and, as a
result of failure to engage with copyright and data privacy issues at an early stage, was
forced to undergo a major ethical and legal review in 2004. Repositories such as JORUM,
AEShareNet and MERLOT have engaged in significant risk assessment, and while their
policies and practices differ significantly, they reflect both those repositories’ willingness to
accept particular levels of legal risk, and their understanding of the legal environment in
which they operate.
9.5.2 Copyright administration

Recommendation: (2) It is recommended that repository owners consider employing a
Policy or Copyright Officer as part of their implementation process, or where their institution
already has a Copyright Officer, drawing upon that resource. Where resource constraints do
not permit this, repository owners should allocate clear responsibility for ensuring copyright
policy is both appropriate and effectively observed, to a team member with an appropriate
level of seniority.
Rationale: Copyright is a complex and rapidly moving field. It is important not just that a
repository‘s policies and practices remain in compliance with the law, but also that it makes
effective use of any legal changes that may enhance its ability to collect, store and
disseminate digital learning objects. A Copyright Officer should have responsibility for:
• ongoing risk assessment and policy/procedure audit;
• liaison with, and provision of guidance to, individuals and institutions on copyright
matters;
• oversight and maintenance of relevant documentation and licences;
• responsibility for administering grievance procedures and ‘notice and takedown’
requests.
Commentary: Undertaking legal risk assessments and developing policies and procedures
for handling potential legal issues can only be effective if there is the necessary motivation
amongst repository staff and users to ensure that these are properly observed. Failure to
ensure compliance with its own policies and practices may expose a repository to additional
liability (negligence/omission); invalidate insurance policies; deter deposit of, and access to,
repository contents; and reduce repository interoperability with other repositories and
referatories.
Examples of existing or prior practice: It is often difficult to identify where the
responsibility for handling intellectual property issues lies in many of the existing
repositories. Certainly a review of the websites of AEShareNet, MERLOT, BCCampus and
others reveals little information about who is responsible for dealing with IP queries,
complaints or requests for removal. Jorum does, in its Procedures to Deal with Queries,
Alerts and Complaints, refer to the ‘Jorum Complaints Officer’, although there is no obvious
indication that this is an individual with particular responsibility for IP matters. Connexions
lists an ‘Intellectual Property Advisor’ as part of its Core Team, and the Learning Federation
has an ‘Intellectual Property Manager’, although that role appears to be more directed to
licensing-out of materials than licensing-in.

9.5.3 Licence variety and choice
Recommendation: (3) It is recommended that repository owners consider adopting a simple
approach to rights management premised upon the licences developed and advocated by
the Creative Commons project. This approach may allow for limited licence adaptation in
specific pre-determined circumstances (to maximise inclusion possibilities), but should have
as its goals enhancing user familiarity with, and comprehension of, the licensing regime, and
avoiding unwarranted licence variety proliferation.
Rationale: Creative Commons licensing provides a relatively simple and well known
licensing regime which will meet the needs of many digital learning object repositories and
their users. Their relative simplicity should not form a barrier to contributions, and should
encourage reuse and, as appropriate, repurposing.
Adopting this relatively simple approach allows users to become familiar with the licensing
regime and permits simple ‘transactions’. At the same time, contributors of resources for
licence have a finite list of known licence types from which to choose.
Commentary: Left to their own devices depositors, particularly at an institutional level, are
likely to seek to use their own bespoke licence terms when licensing resources. Permitting
significant licence variety proliferation will, however, reduce the utility of a repository, as
potential licensees are likely to be confused as to the terms applying to particular material.
Such confusion will not only dissuade the efficient use of digital learning objects by
licensees, but will inevitably lead to inadvertent licence breaches, which are in turn off-
putting to potential licensors.
Simplicity can be enabled by limiting the range of options possible and by presenting only
the essential information to the user in the front screen. There are a number of licence
options provided within the CC scheme, including the emerging ccLearn. Decisions about
preferred CC licence types should be made as part of the implementation stage. However,
as has been noted elsewhere, CC licences may not be suitable for all repositories.
CC licensing does not apply en masse to collections of resources, only individual resources –
although there appears to be no reason in principle why this could not happen. As can be
seen with Jorum, formal agreements at the institutional level can be used as an alternative
when managing the IP issues associated with the contribution of entire collections of
resources. One drawback with these formal institutional agreements is that both users and
repository staff report that they create bottlenecks and are a brake on deposit and use. {21}
Examples of existing or prior practice: AEShareNet offers six licence options for its user
community to use (see Appendix C for simple chart). While the number of licences is quite
broad, AEShareNet provides a range of materials explaining their implications, including a
short and full description of the licences. Connexions provides a very simple single licence
option: all content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
The Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) has also adopted the ‘by attribution’ Creative
Commons Attribution licence, which apparently applies to all MLX packages. Jorum offers a
different licensing model arrangement based on institutional licences, which is discussed
below.
9.5.4 Site licence

Recommendation: (4) It is recommended that repository owners consider whether
developing a site licence to enable a simplified approach to institutional content sharing is a
viable alternative to the Creative Commons licensing approach.

Rationale: A number of repository projects have already dealt with the IP issues associated
with contribution and sharing content between institutions. Although their situations may
differ, their respective licensing arrangements are good starting points for consideration.
Commentary: A site licence may allow institutions to feel comfortable in allowing their
individual staff to contribute to repositories inasmuch as processes are in place for resolving
any contentious issues arising, and content use is explicitly limited to non-commercial
activity. While a ‘global’ agreement with institutions would be desirable, it is possible that this
position may be reached over time by developing and implementing a small number of
prototype agreements and using these to forge a more global agreement.
Examples of existing practice: FE or HE institutions in the UK can sign up to the Jorum
Deposit Licence as licensors, which allows them to put learning and teaching resources into
the Jorum repository. HEFCE is the licensee and is able to sub-license the resources to user
institutions who have signed up for the user service. The resources can contain third party
materials. This approach also forms part of the model used by the Learning Federation (see
Appendix B for comparison of the standard licensing model, the Jorum Licence and the
Learning Federation model). It should be reiterated here that Jorum was specifically
conceived as a sort of over-arching repository for use by a limited number of institutionally
mandated staff, who would upload appropriate materials. Individual users (teachers and
support staff) could then download specific materials for use in a learning and teaching
context and deliver them to students through the institution's VLE or Learning Management
System. This mode of operation may no longer be feasible (i.e., tolerated by users) in the
era of widespread sharing of (many sorts of) content through, for example, Wikipedia .
Jorum’s own staff say that users sometimes complain that Jorum comes across as ‘heavy
handed’, ‘untrusting’, laying down the law on what you can and cannot do, compared to
these easy-to-use mass-audience services (Charlesworth et al 2007).

Recommendation: (5) It is recommended that repository owners ensure that the user
interface for applying and managing licensing conditions is simple to use. Use of a standard
set of icons to indicate key licence terms could be considered.
Rationale: The simpler the user interface to applying and managing licensing conditions is
made, the more likely it is that licensors and licensees will understand and internalise the
basic copyright requirements.
Commentary: The CC has been active in driving the use of icons to indicate to licensors
and licensees, quickly and effectively, the essential elements of their licences. The use of
multi-level licence explanations (the human, machine and lawyer-readable licences) allows
licensors and licensees to operate within their legal comfort zone, or to learn more about the
CC licensing process if they wish. While it is clear that this has not always been successful
(Linksvayer 2007), it seems to be a satisfactory approach for many licensors and licensees.
Ideally, repository owners should aim to utilise existing icon sets where possible, to avoid
icon proliferation and resulting user confusion.
Examples of existing practice: The Creative Commons uses icons in combination to
indicate the key elements of their licences. AEShareNet also uses a set of icons to indicate
the key elements of their licences. See Appendix A for examples of icon sets.

9.5.6 Use of metadata
Recommendation: (6) It is recommended that repository owners ensure that contributed
resources have a licence ‘statement’ within the rights element of their metadata records.
Rationale: Metadata records will provide the primary mechanism for discovering quality
content and each record should contain a rights statement.
Commentary: Repository owners should encourage providers to be as explicit as possible
about licensing terms within the supplied metadata. They could do this by profiling whatever
metadata schema they are using so as to make this information mandatory, or by adding
extension elements which enforce a degree of structure in the way information is provided.
They can also provide guidance for contributors.
Example of existing practice: Curriculum Online state in their Metadata Guide for Tagging
that provision of information about rights and licences information is mandatory. Their advice
on use of the free text Copyright & Other Restrictions / Description field in their metadata
scheme is, ‘A description of the cost or copyright has to be given, though it may be a brief
summary of your full copyright notice. The information may relate to the price, licensing
information or a copyright notice. It may include a web page address where a standard
copyright notice can be found.’ Repository owners should consider whether provision of a
web page address where a standard copyright notice can be found should be mandatory.
9.5.7 Guidance and outreach

Recommendations: (7) It is recommended that repository owners provide guidance and
guidelines to licensors in relation to rights management issues.
(8) It is recommended that repository owners engage in outreach activities, for example by
providing an intellectual property primer/toolkit for licensors to provide clarity about the IP
issues surrounding contribution and participation to their repository.
(9) It is recommended that repository owners engage in outreach activities with institutions to
facilitate better management of upstream IP so that ‘ownership’ of materials is clearer.
(10) It is recommended that repository owners engage in ongoing dialogue on copyright
management with other groups in the educational sector, including contributor interest
groups, institutional representative groups and key personnel (e.g., heads of departments,
senior managers and copyright officers), at individual institutions, to inform further repository
developments.
Rationale: A key difficulty for repositories is the lack of understanding of copyright and IP
management issues amongst both would-be licensors and licensees from the educational
sector. Currently, there is a failure to embed adequate training in IPR into staff development
processes; repository owners need to be proactive in emphasising the value of
understanding those issues given the increased importance attached to intellectual property
rights in the digital environment.
Commentary: Repositories can themselves have a valuable educational role to play, which
can run effectively in tandem with efforts to present rights management issues in as
comprehensible and simple a fashion as possible. Most users will just want the minimal
information presented in simple terms, hence the suggested limited number of licences, and
the use of icons to spell out quickly the key licence terms. Any more than minimal
information will be a disincentive to contribution for some users. However, repository owners
should not underestimate the desire of individual licensors to more fully understand the

implications of the licences they are agreeing to. It is important that full articulation of a
repository’s licence(s) should be available to those licensors and licensees who wish to gain
a greater understanding of the issues.
It is also important to engage with administrators and senior staff in educational institutions.
A key facet of encouraging educational institutions to engage more actively with IPR issues
in elearning content will be to demonstrate to senior management that those issues belong
in the mainstream of teaching activities and within the scope of everyday academic
workflow. It takes time to change culturally embedded attitudes and practices amongst
management and staff, particularly when the advantages of such changes to either may not
be immediately apparent. Thus repositories need to be actively promoting the benefits of
sharing resources even within a competitive marketplace.
Examples of existing practice: Both Jorum and AEShareNet provide extensive information
about their licensing processes. This is particularly important because of the institution-
based nature of Jorum’s licence and the potential complexity of the AEShareNet licence
scheme. Repositories with simpler schemes, such as Connexions, appear to do much less
to inform users about IPR and the nature of their licence, preferring instead to point
interested users towards the Creative Commons website.
9.5.8 Risk amelioration

Recommendations: (11) It is recommended that repository owners do not take on an IPR
policing role with their repositories, other than ‘notice and takedown’, for content such as that
posted without sufficient copyright clearances.
(12) It is recommended that repository owners should take a risk management approach to
IPR (and other content liabilities such as defamation and data privacy) in deposited
materials, including materials containing embedded third party materials.
Rationale: For both resourcing reasons, and as a matter of pragmatism (adopting an
‘editorial’ role may in fact increase rather than decrease potential legal liability) most
repositories will not be able to, or wish to, warrant that the materials they will be making
accessible do not contain unauthorised third party material. Repository owners will thus need
to manage this risk by:
• asking suppliers of materials to warrant they own the necessary rights or have the
permissions to make the materials available;
• reserving the right to withdraw any material in dispute from the repository and, in the
event that a depositor is found to have recklessly or wilfully submitted one or more
materials containing unauthorised third party material, to refuse to accept any further
materials from that individual or institution;
• providing processes through which any material alleged to be infringing in any way
can be removed when the repository is put on notice that this is the case (‘notice and
takedown’);
• providing processes through which individuals or institutions who are claiming that
their rights have been breached can seek a negotiated settlement (‘grievance
procedure’);
• where possible, requesting that any licences chosen by the supplier of materials
should reflect any third party restrictions imposed on the use of the materials or
works embedded in them.

Where repositories seek to add value to their collection, or to enhance the quality of
materials deposited, by means of third party input about materials deposited, such
contributions should also be handled on a licensed basis. Repository owners will thus need
to ensure that
• contributions within repositories, including contributions via Web 2.0 technologies,
such as blogs, wikis and social networking tools, are covered by a generic copyright
statement within their Terms and Conditions of Use.
Commentary: It is likely that a repository hosting material that breached a third party’s IPR
would be able to deflect some, if not all, of the potential liability by rapid removal of the
material in question. The concept of ‘notice and takedown’ in the UK is derived from
Regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, which is
designed to limit the liability of intermediary service providers from any liability incurred from
the activities of hosting in the circumstances set out in those regulations. While it is not
entirely clear that this would cover a repository, as opposed to an ISP hosting a webpage
containing material that breached a third party’s IPR, it seems to be accepted wisdom
amongst repositories, both in the UK and elsewhere, that it is reasonable to operate on that
basis. Certainly the risk involved would, in the absence of a sustained and/or knowing
tolerance by a repository of the deposit of material that breached third party IPR, appear to
be very low.
Establishing a grievance procedure is an effective way of bringing disputes to settlement via
mediation. Many injured third parties will be effectively assuaged by the fact that their
complaint is being treated through a formal procedure.
Examples of existing practice: AEShareNet and Connexions operate on this basis, as do
a number of inherently riskier repository/archive ventures, such as the US Internet Archive.
Jorum has a clear set of Procedures to deal with Queries, Alerts and Complaints for handling
third party complaints and queries.
9.5.9 Developing a policy framework

Recommendation: (13) Based on the foregoing, it is recommended that repository owners
should develop a clear policy framework to support their repository’s positioning on IPR
management. This framework should at a minimum contain formal publicised positions on
the following copyright issues, supported by such guidance documentation, documented
processes, and allocation of internal staff responsibilities as are necessary:
• licence types
• reuse/derivatives policy
• copyright warranties (for material deposited by licensors)
• site copyright statement (for material created by repository staff)
• terms and conditions of use (for any additional material created by third parties in
relation to deposited material and added to the repository)
• take down policy and process
• grievance process and procedure.
A policy framework should be an ever-greening process with constant review of its
rationales, permitting the updating of its elements to best achieve the aims of the repository.
Rationale: Development of a repository’s IPR strategy should be based on a clear
understanding not just of IPR risk management, but also on how the handling of IPR issues

can facilitate a repository’s longer term goals of enhancing/maximising contributions of digital
learning objects with the widest set of reuse possibilities.
Commentary: A potential danger with IPR management is that it can become a ‘static’
process, tying a repository into an inflexible approach to deposit and access. Without a
coherent and reviewable policy framework, the temptation with IPR risk management
assessment is to assume that it is a ‘once and for all’ process, whereas in fact ongoing
review of such assessment should be a permanent feature of repository development.
Examples of existing practice: Jorum and AEShareNet provide perhaps the clearest
examples of mature policy frameworks, with an ongoing commitment to develop the
framework in the future in line with the aims and objectives of those repositories.
9.6 References
General
Baldwin, C. (2004). X4L Review: final report. JISC. July 2004
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/X4L_Review.doc
Bristol BioMed Image Archive
http://www.brisbio.ac.uk/index.html
ccLearn, a division of Creative Commons
http://learn.creativecommons.org/
Charlesworth A. (2005). Rights in Digital Environments: An account of two workshops, August 2005.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISC%20Rights%20in%20Digital%20Environment%20Re
port.pdf
Charlesworth, A., Ferguson, N., Schmoller, S., Smith, N., Tice R. (2007). Sharing eLearning Content
– a synthesis and commentary, JISC, September 2007
http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/46/1/selc-final-report-3.2.pdf
Cordiner, M. (2006). Intellectual Property Issues in Institutional and Cross-Institutional Multimedia
Repositories.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/midess/IPRreport_finalversion.pdf
Fisher, W.W. and McGeveran, W. (2006). The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational
Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age. A Foundational White Paper Berkman Centre
Harvard University Research Publication No. 2006-09, August 2006.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/uploads/823/BerkmanWhitePaper_08-10-2006.pdf
Fripp, C. and McNamara, D. (2003). Copyright management in the world of learning objects.
Educause in Australasia.
http://www.aesharenet.com.au/aesharenet/pdf/147educausepdf.pdf
Fripp, C. (2004). Open Content Licensing: An Emerging Option for Intellectual Property Management.
IIR Conference, Commercialising Intellectual Property.
http://www.aesharenet.com.au/news/archive/pdf/IIR%20Conference%20Aug%202004%20260704_2.
pdf
Halliday, L. (2004). The JISC Online Repository for [learning and teaching] Materials -JORUM
Scoping and Technical Appraisal Study, Volume VII. Digital Rights Management
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/aboutus/archive/docs/vol7_Fin.pdf
Halliday, L. (2006). Digital Rights Management for Jorum: an update, v.1, March 2006
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/docs/pdf/Digital_Rights_Management_Watch.pdf

HEFCE (2006). Intellectual property rights in e-learning programmes: Good practice guidance for
senior managers. July 2006
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2006/06_20/
Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Jeffery, A. and Dickens, K. (2007). Digital rights and intellectual property: a perspective on the issues
relating to language learning object repositories in the Web 2.0 world, eLanguages, Modern
Languages, University of Southampton, October 2007
http://www.elanguages.ac.uk/researchcommunity/projects/murllo/ipr_management.doc.doc
Korn, N. and Oppenheim, C. (2006). ‘Creative Commons Licences in Higher and Further Education:
Do We Care?’ Ariadne, no. 49.
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue49/korn-oppenheim/
Linksvayer, M. (2007). Lawsuit against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons – FAQ, September 27th,
2007
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680
Rights and Rewards in Blended Institutional Repositories
http://rightsandrewards.lboro.ac.uk/index.php?section=21
The Learning Federation (2002). Rights Management Specification, v1.2, July 2002
http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/verve/_resources/rights_management_specification.pdf
The Learning Federation (2004). Approach to Managing Intellectual Property Rights, Version 3.0, July
2004
http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/verve/_resources/managing_intellectual_property_rights.pdf
The Learning Federation (2006). Unlocking IP: Maximising the volume of accessible digital content
v.1.0, May 2006
http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/verve/_resources/maximising_volume_digital_content.pdf
Trust DR - Casey J., Proven J., and Dripps D. July 2007. Managing Intellectual Property Rights in
Digital Learning Materials: A development pack for institutional repositories
http://trustdr.ulster.ac.uk/outputs.php
Uijtdehaage, S.H.J.; Contini, J.; Candler, C.S.; Dennis, S.E. (2003). ‘Sharing Digital Teaching
Resources: Breaking Down Barriers by Addressing the Concerns of Faculty Members’, Academic
Medicine 78(3) 286-294
Licensing, repository terms and conditions, and repository licence guidance

AEShareNet (AUS)
AEShareNet - Licensing Overview
http://www.aesharenet.com.au/coreBusiness/
AEShareNet - Short Licence Comparison Table
http://www.aesharenet.com.au/coreBusiness/whatWeDo/027comparison.asp
AEShareNet - Full Licence Comparison Table
https://www.aesharenet.com.au/coreBusiness/whatWeDo/pdf/LicenceComparisonTablevn10.pdf
AEShareNet - Copyright Information
http://www.aesharenet.com.au/coreBusiness/168copyrightInformation.asp
BCCampus (CAN)
BCCampus - Creative Commons and BC Commons Licenses

http://www.bccampus.ca/EducatorServices/CourseDevelopment/BCCommons.htm
CELEBRATE (EU)
CELEBRATE - Terms and Conditions
http://www.eun.org/ww/en/pub/celebrate_help/test.htm
CLOE (CAN)
CLOE - Sharing, Intellectual Property (IP), Copyright, & Creative Commons
http://www.cloe.on.ca/creative_commons.html
Connexions (US)
Connexions - Service and Repository User Agreement
http://cnx.org/sitelicense
Curriculum Online (UK)
Metadata Guide for Tagging v1.11 November 2003
http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/eqeezxt6ibdyffkw4sgfntf4kh2favvdeuzhhszsn7xezu
mqq43gsj4bspz5t5svbnbmggtwedh4zf/MetadataGuideforTaggingv112.pdf
JORUM (UK)
Jorum - User Terms of Use
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/user/termsofuse/index.html
Jorum - Contributor Terms and Conditions
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/contributors/ctermsofuse/index.html
Jorum - Procedures to deal with Queries, Alerts and Complaints
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/docs/pdf/Queries_alerts_and_complaints_(incl_takedown_procedure).pdf
Maricopa Learning eXchange (US)
Maricopa Learning eXchange
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/
Merlot (US)
MERLOT - Acceptable Use Policy (inc. Creative Commons & MERLOT Intellectual Property)
http://taste.merlot.org/acceptableuserpolicy.html
MIT OpenCourseWare (US)
MIT OpenCourseWare - FAQ: Intellectual Property
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/help/faq3/index.htm
The Learning Federation (AUS/NZ)
The Learning Federation Licences
http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/for_jurisdictions/content_management_and_distribution/tlf_lic
ences/tlf_licences.html

9.7 Appendix A: Use of licence condition icons
Selection of Creative Commons icons
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your
work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original
creation.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-
commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge
you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative
works on the same terms.
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing
redistribution. This license is often called the ‘free advertising’ license
because it allows others to download your works and share them with
others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t
change them in any way or use them commercially.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-
commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new
creations under the identical terms.
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial,

as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to
you.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even
for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their
new creations under the identical terms.
AEShareNet icons
May be freely used and copied for educational purposes but the owner
retains full control of its use for any other purposes.
May be freely copied, adapted and used by anyone. Exact copies must
retain the owner’s copyright statement and the AEShareNet-U mark.
Enhancements must not contain the owner’s copyright statement and may
have a new copyright statement by the Licensee.
Material may be used and enhanced by anyone free of charge but copyright
in published enhancements consolidates with the original owner.
The material may be freely copied but only in its original form including the
owner’s copyright notice.

License conditions can be customised by the owner and a Licence Fee
and/or Royalties may be charged.
Intended for materials to be used on an as-is basis. An E licence can be

taken out by an individual to use the material themselves, or by an
organisation for use within the organisation including by an educational
organisation for use by students.
9.8 Appendix B: Different licence schemes

Basic repository licensing model
This model reflects a basic repository arrangement, whereby the contributor licenses the
users directly, with the repository acting as a host/intermediary for the material.
Deposits Provides
Contributing Material Repository Material User
Institution/Individual Institution/individual
Intermediary
(Licensor) Chooses Accepts (Licensee)
Licence Licence
Licence Agreement
Putting Resources in Hosting the materials Getting Resources out

and selecting licence under terms & conditions subject to licence
Jorum licensing model

In the Jorum model, the HEFCE licenses the work from the contributor and then sub-
licenses it to the user. The user does not therefore get a direct licence from the contributor,
and HEFCE/Jorum are involved directly in the licensing chain.
Contributing Grants
HEFCE Grants User
Institution Institution
(Licensee)
(Licensor) Licence Sub (Sub-Licensee)
Licence
Putting Resources in Jorum acting on behalf of the Getting Resources

subject to Jorum Funding Councils under Jorum out subject to Jorum
licence Licence licence

The Learning Federation licensing model
The Learning Federation’s model is similar to that of Jorum in that it includes:
• learning objects where there is a combination of TLF copyright and third-party
copyright that has been licensed in;
• learning objects where the copyright vests entirely in a third party. That content is
licensed in and made available through TLF's distribution chain.
However, it also includes material for which contributors have assigned the rights to the TLF.
In such cases the TLF is the licensor. The TLR does not deal directly with individuals. At the
school level it deals with ‘Peak Education Bodies’, such as state education departments,
Catholic Education Commission, universities and teacher professional associations.
Contributing
Contributing Grants
TLF Grants Peak
Peak Education
Education
Institution Body
Institution (Licensee) Body
(Licensor) Licence Sub
(Licensor) Licence
(Sub-Licensee)
(Sub Licensee)
Putting Resources in TLF holds the licences Getting

Getting Resources
Resources
subject to TLF out
out subject
subject to
to TLF
TLF
licences licences
licences
TLF
Contributing Assigns Grants Peak Education
(Assignee)
Institution Body
&
(Assignor) © Licence (Licensee)
(Licensor)
Putting Resources in TLF obtains the © in the Getting Resources

via assignment material and licenses it out. out subject to TLF
licences

9.9 Appendix C: AEShare licensing model (simple example)
AEShareNet-C AEShareNet-E AEShareNet-S AEShareNet-P AEShareNet-U AEShareNet-FfE
Commercial Licence End-User Licence Share and Return Preserve Integrity Unlocked Content Free For Education
Licence Period:
Agreed term from 1 month Agreed term from 1 month Perpetual Perpetual Perpetual Perpetual
Territory:
Agreed term can be Everywhere, except where Everywhere Everywhere Everywhere Everywhere
anywhere specified.
Exploitation / Supply Rights:
Customisable End user licence - can be Shared use - Integrity preserved Unrestricted use May be used freely but not
used but not exploited encourages reuse exploited
Licensing:
Fees/royalties may apply End user licence; Instant Licence Instant Licence Instant Licence Instant Licence
fees/royalties may apply no licence fees no licence fees no licence fees free for educational purposes
Offer mechanism:
Licensor registers; licensee Licensor registers product Licensor applies Licensor applies mark, Licensor applies mark, Licensor applies mark,
negotiates/ accepts list; licensee selects items mark, licensee uses licensee uses licensee uses licensee uses
and quantities.
Enhancements:
Enhancements (if Enhancements (if Enhancements vest in Enhancements not Enhanced version vests Edited versions permitted for
permitted) vest in original permitted) vest in original original owner permitted in licensee educational purposes only.
owner owner
Example:
Learning resources Software, books Learning resources Industry standards, Professional Website, policies and general
curriculum development materials information

10 Primary sources
These sources are indicated in the text thus: {27}.
{nn} Title URL if available
01 Timmus Ltd, Resources Discovery Strategy: n/a

Teacher and Learner Literature Review, 2007
02 Timmus Ltd, Literature Review: Teacher Use n/a
of DLRs, Summary and Recommendations,
2007
03 Timmus Ltd, Literature Review: Teacher Use n/a
of DLRs, Catalogue of Evidence, 2007
04 Flow Interactive, Resource Discovery n/a
Strategy: User Personas and Scenarios, 2007
05 Becta, Resource Discovery Services for the n/a
Teaching Workforce in England, 2006
06 Becta, What Will the 2020 World Be Like? n/a
2006
07 Tribal, Becta-DfES Personalised Content n/a
Cross Sector Mapping, 2006
08 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: MLA, n/a
2006-2007
09 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: 24 n/a
Hour Museum, 2006-2007
10 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: n/a
UKOLN, 2006-2007
11 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: n/a
Consultation Replies, 2006-2007
12 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: JISC, n/a
2006-2007
13 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: DFES n/a
Channels Review, 2006-2007
14 Becta, RDS Stakeholder Consultation: Open n/a
University, 2006-2007
15 Framfab, Education Resources Search n/a
Behaviour, 2006
16 Becta, Teachers Sharing Digital Resources: n/a
Expressing IPR, 2007
17 Becta, E Safety Guidance Summary, 2008 n/a
18 Becta, Making Accessible Software: A guide n/a
for developers and providers, 2007
19 Becta, Quality Principles, 2007 n/a
20 Becta, Choosing and Using Digital Learning n/a

Resources: Draft, 2007
21 Ferguson et al. 2006. Review for JISC of core n/a
resource discovery services: Archives Hub,
Copac, SUNCAT and Zetoc

22 Synthesis report for JISC on Sharing http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/getfile.cfm?documentfileid=12353
eLearning Content
23 Calibrate http://calibrate.eun.org/ww/en/pub/calibrate_project/home_page.htm
24 FRED Federated Repositories for Education http://fred.usq.edu.au/
25 Learning Federation http://econtent.thelearningfederation.edu.au/fast/tlf/
26 LORN - the Learning Object Repository http://lorn.flexiblelearning.net.au/

Network
27 edna http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/about/services
28 eMAPPS Motivating Active Participation of http://www.emapps.com/

Primary Schoolchildren in Digital Online
Technologies for Creative Opportunities
through Multimedia
29 MELT Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) http://melt-project.eu
portal for schools
30 CSU Digital Marketplace http://www.calstate.edu/ats/digital_marketplace/
31 OAI Guidelines http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/guidelines-repository.htm
32 Repository Ecology paper (Barker) http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/philb/2007/08/23/the-repository-ecology-approach-to-

describing-cross-search-aggregation-service-management/
33 IDC White Paper - LCMS (Brennan et al) http://www.lcmscouncil.org/idcwhitepaper.pdf
34 SUGAR Project http://www.apsr.edu.au/sugar/sugar.pdf
35 Oxfam CMS Model (CISOC) http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/wp/Oxfam_CS_0808a.pdf
36 COIN-OR Foundation (2005). Repository http://www.coin-or.org/management/forms/contribpolicy.pdf

Management Policy
37 DAISY Repository Administration http://www.cocoondev.org/daisydocs-2_1/admin/40-cd.html
38 Tasmanian Government Web Publishing http://www.egovernment.tas.gov.au/themes/web_publishing/common_node/resources

Framework & Content Management /public/wpub-reso-open-guide-content-man.pdf
Guidelines
39 DRIVER http://www.driver-support.eu/en/guidelines.htm
40 Guidelines for the Creation of Institutional http://www.escholarlypub.com/digitalkoans/2007/09/17/institutional-repository-

Repositories … guidelines/
41 Digital Repositories in UK Universities and http://www.freepint.com/issues/160206.htm#feature

Colleges (Jacobs)
42 CORDRA http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/kraan/03kraan.html
43 MACAR http://www.arrow.edu.au/macar
44 ebXML http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/7327/eGovebXMLRegistrydraft01.doc

45 Designing and Building Integrated Digital http://www.ifla.org/VII/s31/pub/Profrep90.pdf
Library Systems - Guidelines (Rajthe et al)
46 Rule Use & Interoperability … (Rehak) http://www.w3.org/2004/12/rules-ws/paper/79/
47 Trusted Digital Repositories (RLG-OCLC) http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/past/trustedrep/repositories.pdf
48 DSpace – SFU, Mexico, etc http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/policies/community_and_collection.jsp

https://repository.unm.edu/dspace/bitstream/1928/289/2/dspace_policies.doc
https://dspace.byu.edu/policies.jsp
49 Online Repositories for Learning Materials: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/thomas-rothery/
The User Perspective (Thomas & Rothery)
50 Access Pennsylvania http://www.accesspadigital.org/pdf/access_pa_dig_rep_guidelines.pdf
51 APSR http://www.apsr.edu.au/
52 Commonwealth of Learning http://www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/2922
53 Demetrius http://dspace.anu.edu.au/
http://sts.anu.edu.au/demetrius/standards/
54 OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/HowTo/Technology-mitocw-architecture.htm
55 RUBRIC http://www.rubric.edu.au/packages/RUBRIC_Toolkit/docs/Metadata_lite.htm
56 IDEALS http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/about/IDEALSPolicies.html
57 MERLOT http://www.merlot.org/
http://www.q4r.org/
58 Quality for Reuse best practice
59 QIA Excellence Gateway http://excellence.qia.org.uk/
60 National Education Network http://www.nen.gov.uk/
61 Teacher Resource Exchange http://tre.ngfl.gov.uk
62 NGfL Cymru http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc-home.htm
63 TeacherNet http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/
64 SchoolsWeb http://www.schoolsweb.gov.uk/
65 Learning Curve http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/
66 TES Resource Bank http://www.tes.co.uk/resources/home.aspx
67 Schoolzone http://www.schoolzone.co.uk
68 TEEM http://www.teem.org.uk/
69 Learnthings http://www.learn.co.uk/
70 various regional ‘Grids for Learning’ http://www.portal.northerngrid.org/index.cfm?s=1&m=173&p=173,index
71 Connexions – Sharing Knowledge and http://cnx.org/

Building Communities

11 Secondary sources
ACCAC (Wales) http://www.accac.org.uk
Access 4All http://dublincore.org/accessibilitywiki/AccessForAll
Adaptive technology resource centre

http://atrc.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=276&Itemid=137
Apple: Human interface guidelines (PDF)

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/OSXHIGuidelines.pdf
ARIADNE http://www.ariadne-eu.org/
Australian Government Information Office (AGIMO) ‘Better Practice checklists’

http://www.agimo.gov.au/practice/delivery/checklists
Becta: Guidelines for website accessibility http://industry.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=14281
Becta: Inclusion and SEN http://www.becta.org.uk/schools/inclusion
Becta: Learning resource development advice http://www.becta.org.uk/industry/content
BETT Awards http://www.becta.org.uk/bettawards
Carey, T.T. and Hanley G. 2007 Extending the Impact of Open Educational Resources: Lessons Learned from
MERLOT, book chapter in Opening Up Education: Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge in Support of the
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DENI: Curriculum and Assessment http://www.deni.gov.uk/index/80-curriculumandassessment_pg.htm
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Disability Discrimination Act 1995 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/Ukpga_19950050_en_1.htm
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Dublin Core http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dces/OAI-PMH: Dubin Core, oai_dc
EAD (Encoded Archival Descrption) http://www.loc.gov/ead/

edna - strategic directions 2006-2008
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/about/strategic_directions
edna - http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go
e-Government Schemas and Standards http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/schemasstandards.asp
Eprints OAI-PMH Guidelines: eprints
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IBM: Ease of use design concepts http://www-03.ibm.com/easy/page/567
IMS Global Learning Consortium http://www.imsglobal.org
Jakob Nielsen’s Ten usability heuristics http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html
JISC Information Environment Architecture http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/jisc-ie/arch/
JISC Legal information service http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk
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LORNET http://www.lornet.org/
Marc 21 http://www.loc.gov/marc/OAI-PMH Guidelines: oai_marc
MERLOT http://taste.merlot.org/
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http://www.rubric.edu.au/packages/RUBRIC_Toolkit/docs/Metadata_lite.htm
Newman T. and Smith E. (2007). Resource discovery strategy: Teacher and learner literature review. Produced for
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NIME http://www.nime.ac.jp/en/
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http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/openarchivesprotocol.htm.
Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project

http://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au/
OpenLearn Learning Space http://openlearn.open.ac.uk
Passey (2007). Pers. Comm.. ‘Why teachers do not share resources’. Word document available from the author of this
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PerX: Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/perx /
Q4R Wiki http://artemis.licef.teluq.uqam.ca/q4r/index.php/Main_Page
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Instructional Design and Technology, 2nd Edition
RSLP http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/schema/
Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) http://www.sifinfo.org
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content-man.pdf
TechDis http://www.techdis.ac.uk
The branding schema OAI-PMH Guidelines: branding
The http protocol http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616
TLF (2006) Unlocking IP. Maximising the volume of accessible content.

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TLF Technical Specification for Content Development

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Good Practice Guidelines For Repository Owners: March 2008

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Good Practice Guidelines for Repository Owners

Book · March 2008

Andrew Charlesworth David Massart

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Frans Jan Maurits Van Assche Jon Mason

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digital futures, scenario planning, & question technologies View project

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Good Practice Guidelines for Repository Owners page 1

Good Practice Guidelines for Repository Owners page 2

Good Practice Guidelines for Repository Owners page 3

1.2 Repositories in context

Figure 1 Repositories in the wider information environment

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Figure 2. The intrinsic relationship

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2 Standards and specifications

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Good Practice Guidelines for Repository Owners page 8

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2.5 Detailed guidance

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Figure 3 Guidelines overview

2.5.1 Use standards and specifications

2.5.2 Know your environment

2.5.3 Use standards and specifications in a consistent way

2.5.4 Use an incremental approach

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2.5.5 Adopt a service-oriented approach

Figure 4 – the repository at the centre of a service oriented approach

2.5.6 Adopt common application profiles within your community of use

2.5.7 Utilise conformance checking and maintenance tools

2.5.8 Ensure that content is packaged appropriately

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2.5.9 Expose content using standards based interfaces

2.5.10 Ease the burden of metadata creation

2.5.11 Use controlled vocabularies

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3.3.1 Accommodating humans and machines

3.3.2 Making the business case explicit

3.3.3 Resource discovery

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3.3.5 Web 2.0 and the provision of value-added services

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3.3.6 Balancing commercial and non-commercial inputs

3.3.7 Policies and tools for reuse

3.3.8 Exposing content and/or metadata for search and harvesting

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3.3.10 Access management

3.3.11 Cultural issues

3.3.12 User interface

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3.5 Detailed guidance

3.5.3 Repository owners should seek advice concerning issues of information

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