Unit 13

I have really enjoyed my experience in this class, as well  IRLS 672 over the summer. Although it has been very challenging, I have learned so much which I know will be helpful in my future career (as well as in my other classes). It was helpful to take a wider view this semester into what the technology learned in 672 is used for in the real world. I was not even aware of institutional repositories before the course (or at least in the sense of them as a concept an what their purposes are). It was interesting to see how different the repository software is and how careful you need to be in your selection of which one is best for a particular collection. I also found it very helpful to see the different ways that metadata can be personalized in each type of software to better fit the collection.

I think that one particularly helpful exercise has been developing our own standards for what we want in the software. It has been interesting to see how different all of our collections are and how we have different priorities, whether it is appearance or long-term preservation. The management readings, while often difficult to absorb, were helpful not only for helping me see how repositories are being developed by different types of institutions, but also in seeing how they present themselves and how to read "in between the lines" in the papers themselves. I definitely feel more prepared to work with these types of repositories; I am by no means an expert, but I am glad to have learned enough to be able to understand more of what I am looking at. Overall I am pleased with my experience with this course, and I think it will end up being one of the most directly useful ones I take in the program.