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On Tuesday I spent an interesting day at the British Academy discussing Open Access and Repositories in the Arts. The event was organised by the Repositories Support Project (RSP) and ably hosted by Bill Hubbard and Dominic Tate. I gave a short presentation on PRIMO; other projects covered included KULTUR (Andrew Gray from University of the Arts, London) and the White Rose repository (Rachel Proudfoot from Leeds University). It was also gratifying to find myself on the same bill as Charles Oppenheim, who gave us his entertaining overview of the many and varied forms of IPR issue that afflict repository endeavours – particularly those affecting multimedia repositories handling photography, video, audio and performing arts.

Many interesting discussions about repository approaches for the arts followed, both in the workshops, plenary debates, and over the rather smashing buffet lunch. One interesting direction the discussions took was in suggesting that while endeavours like KULTUR and PRIMO provide examples of ways to develop repositories for visual and performing arts, they don’t offer any kind of ready-made application for institutions wanting to create their own repositories with a minimum of fuss and cost. Is it possible that the benefits of such projects (particularly JISC-funded projects) would be greater if the outputs generated a reusable product rather than just a script or a recipe? Bill agreed to discuss this idea further within RSP, and I look forward to following it up soon.

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