Blog

OR2013 Stats

Who You Are

305 people attended Open Repositories 2013 this year. If you were one of them:

  • There was a 3.3% chance your name was Peter.
  • There was a 2.9% chance your name was Mark
  • There was a 2% chance your name was Sarah

Where You're From

Added together, the attendees of OR2013 traveled a combined 960,000 km (560,000 miles) - or an average of 3000 km (1900 miles) each to get here.

Registration Desk Open Sunday at Noon

For all of our guests who like to get squared away early, we will be opening our registration desk at the Delta Prince Edward from noon until 6:00 PM on Sunday, July 7th. Come down and get your badge, program, and bag of conference goodies.

Charlottetown Local Tips

In less than a week we will be meeting you all in beautiful Charlottetown, PE, but before you join us on our island, we wanted to give you information and a few tips about the area.

Road Work:

If you are flying into the Charlottetown airport, one of the first features of PEI summer that you may encounter is crews working to fix and improve our local roads.

If you are planning to use your GPS device to find your way around, be advised that a detour is in place on the standard route from the airport: when you arrive at the airport terminal, you will exit to Brackley Point Road via Maple Avenue. Brackley Point road south bound (your left) will take you to city centre of Charlottetown, north bound (your right) will take you towards Brackley Beach, or via using the roundabout you may reach Sherwood Road which will take you to Route 2, Malpeque Road

If that all sounds even more confusing, worry not. Charlottetown's not a big place and it's hard to get *really* lost. Just look for University Avenue, which runs through downtown up to UPEI and beyond. The conference venue, banquet dinner, and a ton of dining and shopping options are all in the downtown core.

Getting Around:

Charlottetown is a very walkable city, especially if you are staying near the conference venue downtown. There are a wide variety of shops, restaurants, and other diversions within a few scenic blocks.

Public Transit is available around Charlottetown. The schedule can be found here. Cabs are also readily available around Charlottetown with very reasonable fares.

PEI itself is better explored with a car so you can take in the sights. Discount Car and Truck rentals is offering special rate for conference attendees (details here) or you can head over to the conference's CrowdVine hangout to put together a group road trip and make some new friends.

Where to Eat:

We are looking forward to hosting you for Wednesday night's banquet dinner at Victoria Row, but what about the other evenings?

There is a lot to taste in Charlottetown. We are providing a restaurant guide in your conference bag, which you can peruse on the fly. Or you can use tools like EatsPEI or Tourism PEI to plan out some places you'd like to visit. Most will take reservations for larger parties if you need to get together with colleagues. Many of the downtown restaurants have outdoor patios, which provide an excellent opportunity for a relaxing evening of drinks and food.

Make sure to try some of the dishes Canada and PEI is known for such as: oysters, mussels, poutines, and donairs!

Most downtown restaurants stop serving food between 10pm and Midnight. If you are looking for a late night snack we suggest some of the following places, which serve until 3-4am: China Garden, Pizza and Poutine Co. and Canton.

Weather:

It's summer in PEI, which usually means mild, sunny weather with a pleasant breeze. Temperatures average around the 20s in Celsius (70s Fahrenheit), dipping a few degrees when it's cloudy. Rain tends to be pretty light.

Mosquitoes, while not *quite* qualifying as the provincial bird, tend to make their presence known in the evenings and a little bug repellent might be in order if you're going exploring out-of-doors.

Other:

To help out with general questions, like how to deal with our colorful money or what to expect from the weather, we have put together a page of general information about Canada, PEI, and Charlottetown.

If you have any questions at all or if there is anything we can to do help you plan your stay, please drop us a line at or2013@or2013.net or on Twitter at @OpenRepos2013

See you next week!
The OR2013 Team

Developer's Challenge Ideas - Now Posted!

We have published the initial ideas submitted for the OR2013 Developer's Challenge here. In brief, they include:

  • PDF/Eh?
  • Leveraging Fedora 4
  • Integrate ORCID IDs
  • Open Repos Conference Repository
  • Hosting Multiple Fedora 3 Objects in Fedora 4
  • Meeting OSTP Directives
  • Integration with ArchivesSpace

We are still welcoming more ideas for the challenge! Submit yours here.

OR2013 is Mobile on Guidebook

The Open Repositories 2013 Conference schedule is now available for your tablet or mobile device via Guidebook, along with maps, lists of sponsors, and other useful information you may want to have on hand during the conference.

Where are you from?

As of today, over 230 organizations from around the world are represented by OR2013 attendees.

Check out the full news item to see a sample of where you're coming from.

Banquet on Victoria Row

Come join us Wednesday evening on Victoria Row for an evening of locally inspired cuisine, drinks and entertainment.

Victoria Row is section of Richmond Street in the heart of downtown Charlottetown that is closed off to traffic during the summer months. From June to September, Victoria Row offers outdoor patios for drinks and dinner, as well as outdoor entertainment. Four of the most popular restaurants in Charlottetown can be found here: Globe World Flavours, Castello’s Ristorante & Pizzeria, Ristorante Diem and Fishbones Oyster Bar & Seafood Grill.

From 6:00 – 7:30pm we invite you to join us on Victoria Row for a drink and some delicious appetizers being served at all four restaurants. At 7:30pm the restaurants will be hosting a sit down dinner for our delegates. Drinks and entertainment will continue into the evening, providing an excellent opportunity to relax, network and enjoy the night with your fellow conference attendees.

Throughout the evening, we will be hosting local entertainment on Victoria Row’s outdoor stage for your enjoying, including:

  • Mindwaves
  • Colour Code
  • Ten Strings and a Goat Skin
  • Jake Denty
  • The Meds


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Bar Bingo - Monday Night

Become familiar with downtown Charlottetown food and nightlight through participating in Bar Bingo on Monday, July 8th from 6 pm to whenever (local bars close around midnight).

Participants will be given a bingo card with 20 local bars and 5 Charlottetown Landmarks. You will make your way around Charlottetown in your own groups finding each bar on your card and having the bartenders sign or stamp their respective square. An honor system will be used and participants will check off the Charlottetown landmarks as they find them.

Interested in Altmetrics? Participate in a Focus Group!


The scholarly publishing world has begun to embrace "altmetrics", which are poised to illuminate research impact in new ways. Altmetrics for scholarly articles ("article-level metrics") have become a hot topic in the fields of librarianship and information science. The UK-based start-up Altmetric specializes in providing article-level metrics and digital tools for scholarly publishers, and currently offers its services to librarians and open access repositories for free.

During Open Repositories 2013, Altmetric will be holding a focus group session to learn about the ways that article-level metrics tools can better meet the needs of libraries and repositories. Librarians and repository managers are invited to join this focus group and share their opinions, which will help to shape improvements in Altmetric's metrics and tools. In advance of the session, all registered participants will be provided with a free account to access the Altmetric Explorer web app, which allows for rich browsing of altmetrics data.

The focus group session will take place on July 11th at the Delta (room to be announced), from 9:30-10:30am, and will be moderated by Jean Liu, the data curator and blog editor for Altmetric. To register for the "Open Repositories 2013 Focus Group: Altmetrics in Libraries & Repositories", please visit the Eventbrite page.

Have an event of your own during or near OR2013? Email us at or2013@or2013.net

Workshop Signup

The first day of the conference is dedicated to workshops and the Developer's Challenge. Seating is limited for some workshop events, so please reserve your place now. Please note that reservations for the DSpace Developer's Meeting must be made off site.

Register for Workshops