Last week, COAR participated in a training event organized by DuraSpace and CONCYTEC, the Peruvian Council for Science and Technological Information. The aim of the workshop was to help increase expertise for managing repositories at Peruvian universities and was attended by over 130 people, with another 120 people watching it on the live stream.

The event was planned in order to support the Open Access Repository Law in Peru and the increasing integration in that country between repositories and CRIS systems. The program included an overview of the international context for repositories, interoperability, and next generation repositories; a hands-on training session of the DSpace platform; and an introduction to DSpace-CRIS software. The training was delivered by DuraSpace, COAR and 4Science, and will be followed up with a plan for a more active community of practive in Peru around repositories.

The training took place in conjunction with a two-day conference at which COAR also had the opportunity to present our vision for the future of repositories to a large Peruvian audience.

This activity reflects COAR’s increasing emphasis in capacity building for repositories internationally. Although COAR is platform agnostic, we understand that it is important to partner with the major platform providers used in different countries to ensure that we are also addressing and contributing to the local technical expertise.

If you are interested in working with us to develop repository training for your country or region, please get in touch with me.

Kathleen Shearer, COAR Executive Director