Blogging about repository software

I work on a project that is investigating institutional repositories, so I see quite a lot of them, and have more than a few opinions. But as it says in my email signature, this is all funded by the Australian Government:

RUBRIC is supported by the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative as part of the Commonwealth Government's Backing Australia's Ability - An Innovative Action Plan for the Future (http://backingaus.innovation.gov.au)

And we have relationships with other projects funded from the same source. We're using software they they have developed and/or endorse, so the 'official' outputs from the RUBRIC project have to be rather carefully considered.

We also have to tiptoe around issues like software vendors who tell us stuff about their plans that they don't want made public.

So I've been a bit coy about discussing repository software here. It's easier to write about software that we are not dealing with at work, about which I know practically nothing, than to think up an appropriate wording to say something about a bit of software I know quite a bit about as part of the RUBRIC project.

But by not reporting on what's going on we're losing part of the story, and delaying the publication of useful insights and technical tidbits by months, so I'm going to try, along with the RUBRIC C-team bloggers (that's Caroline, Corey and Cameron) to report on some of the interesting things we're finding out, and at point out where we think the most important issues lie – but be aware that we are a little constrained by the terms of our project and our inter-project relationships.