Many years ago the Support Services Group (then TLIG) set up an IT document sharing archive. Basically it allowed people to provide a list of links to online documents they were happy to share. For various reasons, the archive wasn't maintained and died several years ago.
Brian Kelly (UKOLN) set up a simple Google-based search for a few of the original sites. And we have been asked to investigate if the community would find a more comprehensive resource useful.
I think there are a number of questions we need to answer before we start.
What is a document? Or is 'document' an old-fashioned word, and not really relevant. The document sharing archive did share documents, most of which were originally paper-based. Perhaps now we should be talking about resources - online documents, FAQs, YouTube videos etc?
What can we share? Here at Leeds, in 2000, we had a comprehensive set of in-house documents covering most of the applications on our desktop. However, since then we've bought Watsonia's Engine Room, so many of our new documents are site-licenced and can only be made available within the University. I wondered how many other institutions are in a similar position. And of course, even with in-house documents you may not want to freely share them.
Finally, we don't want to re-invent the wheel. Is there already somewhere to share IT resources? Let us know.
Tuesday 10 March 2009
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2 comments:
I think there are a couple of reasons why sharing IT documentation and support materials has not worked in the past.
One of them is cultural. There's no culture in UK HE of sharing material like this. It takes a bit of effort if the material has to be uploaded somewhere (such as Jorum) and there's no direct benefit to the document author, the IT unit or the institution from doing that. In fact, it probably never crosses anyone's mind that it would be worth doing.
If someone does feel inclined to share their material, the next issue is concern over its ownership. Is the institution happy for (selected parts of) its IT documentation and support materials to be available for re-use under (say) Creative Commons terms? This question can easily be answered by the IT Service Director, but I'm pretty sure staff don't ask - for the reasons above.
How can this situation be improved? Several things are needed, including:
* An agreed place to deposit and search for such materials (Jorum?)
* OR an agreed way of highlighting and searching for such materials on an institution's website
* PLUS top-down encouragement from IT Directors to put an appropriate license statement on material and to make it available as above.
What else needs to be done?
I think the idea of using a Creative Commons licence for "documentation" is an excellent one. I wonder if the group might be in a position to suggest a "default version" for use across the community?
On the subject of what to call this stuff, "documentation" doesn't really cut it any more. I see that Apple is using "tutorials" - text and video - does that describe the kind of resource we're talking about?
And how about using social bookmarking as a means of providing access?
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