Outreach and Advocacy

A successful advocacy strategy can lead to positive and fruitful results. If a European wide repository management and user community can be established that is active, engaged and committed to the use and growth of repositories, then demand-led technologies will be supported and will develop. Without such a community, even the best technologies will find it hard to become adopted.

DRIVER sees the development and continued support of the management and user community as vital to the long term adoption and use of repositories and the wider exposure of European research. DRIVER partners will use and develop resources held on the DRIVER Support site . These materials will have an independent life of their own outside of DRIVER as they are intended to be used and re-used by the wider repository community. Advocacy materials, like leaflets and presentations , are designed to be repurposed by repository advocates and managers in their own advocacy work.

Engaging the repository community is an activity that is undertaken by DRIVER partners in order to engage the community with the DRIVER project as much as possible. By engaging with other projects, DRIVER can improve communication across the community and ensure a cohesive approach to repository development in Europe. By promoting DRIVER’s tools and services and showcasing its unique features through press releases and attendance at conferences, DRIVER engages with the community in a constructive and proactive way.

With this in mind, DRIVER seeks to collaborate with other projects in a mutually beneficial way in order to be able to gain from the collaboration but also to contribute in terms of expertise and share best practice. There has been a significant interest from BePress, JISC, DART-Europe, SPARC Europe and Intute Repository Search, to name a few examples, shows the key role held by DRIVER in the European Repository Community.