Repository 66 is an innovative site that uses a data mashup to display where in the world you might find content in repositories.
Geographical data about repositories (which is attached to the record each repository receives when it’s registered in either of the twin directories ROAR and OpenDOAR is combined with Google Maps to produce a browsable world-map of repositories on all continents*.
It’s possible to restrict the display: to only those repositories running a particular type of repository software (e.g. EPrints, the platform we use at Lincoln); to repositories from a single country; or to repositories registered with ROAR/OpenDOAR within a specific date range.
(Image: growth of the University of Lincoln's own repository, displayed on the Repository 66 map. Click for bigger.)
Then, clicking on the drawing pin icon for a particular repository displays additional information in a ‘pop-out’. Data is pulled in from ROAR/OpenDoAR about each repository, and displayed along with a graph of how it has grown over time (see the example for Lincoln, above), and an embedded search box so that you can search that repository without ever leaving the Repository 66 site.
You can also scale the ‘drawing pins’ on the map by the size of the repository: i.e. a repository containing many records will be given a larger drawing pin icon than one containing relatively few. This is useful to identify the ‘big hitters’ in a particular country or area.
What other repository-discovery or search tools do you use?
*except Antartica…
