Dr Christopher Loughnane has joined the University of Galway Library as NORF Open Access Repositories Project Manager. He has worked since 2010 as a librarian, archivist, researcher, digital project consultant and educator in various libraries and institutions in the UK and USA, including university research centres, museums and archives, public libraries, and as library director in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. His previous position was Engineering & Physical Sciences Librarian at the University of New Hampshire. Prior to that, he worked at Auburn University as Visiting Research Scholar in Digital Scholarship and Innovation, and Digital Scholarship Librarian, chairing the Digital Scholarship Interest Group and project-managing AlabamaMosaic, a state-wide digital repository used by museums, archives, libraries and universities to display their digital collections.  

He joins the University of Galway in leading a two-year NORF-funded project to align Ireland’s network of open access repositories’ metadata standards with international best practices. So far, the project has completed an inventory of open access repositories and a survey of repository metadata practices. Twenty-nine repositories registered for the Inventory of Open Access Repositories, comprising a range of institutions including universities, colleges, schools, and government departments. You can view the full list here: https://universityofgalway.ie/openrepositories/inventory/. A survey of institutional repository metadata practices has also been conducted, with twenty-five repositories filling out the detailed 85-question form. This valuable data is now being analysed and will inform the work of the project board as the project progresses towards its first set of deliverables, due in December 2023, which includes the publication of an Irish repository landscape report.