Bringing your user community with you...a story of successful engagement

Engagement with the practice-based research community is challenging and not helped by repository architecture and funder mandates focussed on the capture of and open access to text-based outputs (e.g. journal articles). The capture of creative arts and other practice-based (non-text) outputs have been considered as almost an afterthought, forming part of a wider, changing portfolio including the original object and related documentation (research data). Institutions often place these objects in an open access publications repository and the associated documentation in a data repository, potentially fracturing what should be one conversation with those on open access taking place in different forums to those on research data; different teams may also be supporting these areas, including libraries, archives, records management and research offices. A number of projects have made real progress highlighting the need for simplified templates, appropriate metadata, visually appealing design such as slideshows and the ability to re-use content which resulted in updated to repository software. There is however work to be done with attendees at the Repository Fringe conference in 2018 expressing continuing concerns relating to engagement. This presentation offers tips based on how the University of Westminster, an institution with a history of practice-based research, has successfully engaged with this research community throughout the development of their single repository solution.