Highlights of Open Repositories 2008!

Repositories play a pivotal role in the evolving scholarly information environment of open access research outputs and scholarly collections. With its theme of "Practice and Innovation", OR08 will create an opportunity for practitioners and researchers to share experiences and to explore the challenges of the new scholarly communication.

The Steering Committee is pleased to invite your participation in the Third International Conference on Open Repositories, April 1st – 4th, 2008 in Southampton, UK. The conference will be hosted by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, which has a 20 year history of research into hypertext, multimedia, digital libraries and open access, spawning products like the Microcosm open hypertext system and the EPrints repository platform.

During the four-day conference, Open Repositories 2008 will provide focused workshops and tutorials, followed by general conference sessions that cover cross-cutting and overarching issues and EPrints/DSPace and Fedora user group meetings.

The many repository platforms available today are changing the nature of scholarly communication. Institutions such as universities, research laboratories, publishers, libraries, and commercial organizations are creating innovative repository-based systems that address the entire lifecycle of information—from supporting the creation and management of digital content, to enabling use, re-use, and interconnection of information, to ultimately ensuring long-term preservation and archiving.

The conference program will cover the following themes:

• transformational change in the knowledge workplace
• professionalism and practice
• sustainability
• legal issues
• successful interoperability
• models, architectures and frameworks
• value chains and scholarly communications
• services built on repositories
• use cases for repositories

Southampton is on the South coast of England and is located one hour from London by train, or from Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Paris by air, it is an excellent base to explore the UK or northern Europe. Originally a viking settlement, Southampton boasts the longest medieval city walls still surviving in England.

Southampton is an historically important maritime port and has played a significant role on the world stage over the last 500 years. In 1415, King Henry V's forces sailed from Southampton for the Battle of Agincourt and in 1620 the Mayflower took the pilgrims to the New World. The city has also witnessed the the maiden voyages of both the Titanic in 1912 and the Queen Mary 2 (designed by University of Southampton graduate Stephen Payne) in 2004.

The city's Maritime Museum tells the story of this important port and is home to the Titanic Voices Exhibition where visitors can relive the story of this famous ship. Southampton's maritime history still has an important role in city life to this day, with a major focus on water sports, sailing and ocean racing. The city hosts the annual Southampton Boat Show, the largest on-water boat show in Europe, while just across the water on the Isle of Wight, Cowes Week draws the world's best sailors for a week of competitive racing every August.