Ithaca NY Earlier this week in London Eduserv (http://www.eduserv.org.uk/) and JISC (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/) organized a free “Repositories in the Cloud” day-long event as a way to offer software developers, repository managers, service providers, and funding/advisory bodies a review of potential policy and technical issues associated with cloud computing and the delivery of repository services in UK Higher Educational Institutions. As Gaz J. Johnson, University of Leicester Library concluded in his conference report, “Overall this was a challenging day of thought and discussion.  Am I convinced that cloud computing is the saviour of repositories? No.  Do I think real economic savings can be made with them? Not yet. Do I think they’re relevant to the future of the repository community?  Almost certainly.”

Morning plenary speakers included Michele Kimpton, CBO DuraSpace, “DuraCloud - Open technologies and services for managing durable data in the cloud,” Alex D. Wade, Director Scholarly Communication, Microsoft Research, “Cloud Services for Repositories,” and Les Carr, EPrints, University of Southampton, “EPrints Cloud Visions.” Themed breakout sessions were held in the afternoon.

Kimpton commented, “Participants seemed interested in potential new cloud computing functionality such as the ability to run different kinds of services in the cloud.”

Read Johnson’s full report here: http://uollibraryblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/repositories-and-the-cloud-conference-report/

Download Repositories in the Cloud presentations and related materials here: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/repcloud

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