Research sites, institutes and chairs

The following table contains the results of a high level scan across all identified research centres, institutes and chairs (plus the various other collaborative structures and activities that were "stumbled" across, such as projects, groups and initiatives). From now on all these are referred to as "collaborative entities", even if this is not true from a legal stand-point. The listing combinations those identified in the high level scope document, spreadsheets and comments provided by 'Tash (and other team members), and a check against every faculty and schools webpage of research entities and structures. There are more than 70 entities in total.

The table has captured only a few of all the possible attributes, so is exhaustive only in how many rows or entries, not in the data on each one. The purpose behind the analysis is to identify if the site/page should be in scope or out, and if in how we should approach it. As such, the most important column is the right-hand one.

The key findings from this analysis are:

• Similar key activities: Almost all of the collaborative entities are involved in research, many in teaching (if PG supervision is defined as teaching. Note that some state explicitly that they offer this service and others are silent on it, leaving me wondering if it is tacit knowledge or they don't do supervision), most have a public or policy engagement function, most share news and events, and many have resources available.
• School-like: A school template might be a good proxy/starting point for a research entity template, as many of the facets or dimensions of information are similar.
• Inconsistent primary attachment: As in it could be (occasionally a staff member) the school, the faculty, the University or outside or scope/mandate/orbit. And it is often multi-faceted. Maybe we ought not try to "attach" these to one University unit but have them more loosely "associated" with as many as necessary?
• New templates are required: Due to the similarity of function and information, most collaborative entities can be handled by one of two or three new templates (or patterns):
  1. Standard entity: With the exception of the smaller entities most have similar activities (see above), information and functions. This means that most of the content could be accommodated with a standard set of pages/tabs/sections, especially if we provided the flexibilities on which are mandatory and what they are called
  2.  Simpler entity: Some of the entities are much simpler, as in they currently only have one page. Even allowing for some that would like more space and functionality, there is a need for a simple (probably single page) template to cater for these entities. It would provide some web presence for basic descriptive and contact information, but not much more.
• Use metadata elements: Given the efficiency of having a small repertoire of templates to cater for many different entities we would benefit from some metadata element to allow us to categories entities (for search, listings, etc). 
• Explore how school-like entities are: Once we finalise what the new school template (where CSP information is stripped out and they are integrated into the faculty site) will look like we should consider if this is a good starting point for the new standard entity template. Although there are some differences, there are also many similarities. If we can reuse prior WIP work we not only save resources in the project phase but set up a more efficient maintenance path for the future. 
• Resources: Many of the entities have valuable resources that they want available, some of the sites are really only this. Maybe there is a better way to represent this offering and increase patronage? Examples include the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection which is a part of the library and the Language Learning Centre.
• Service provision: How should we handle a unit offering services (and not doing research)? Examples include the Victoria Psychology Clinic (when to students one thinks student information/services but what about when to the public?) and  the Language Learning Centre.
• Curated listing plus show all option: I believe there is a place for a curated listing of research entities, much like we currently have on the web. However, I also think there needs to be a "show all" and possibly that the search needs to look across them all, maybe prioritising results on the curated list. These secondary entities would be tagged and therefore searchable, addressable (with a url), connected in context and provide exposure/celebration of researhc outputs, bnut not listed/indexed.

Note from Jane Young (Unlicensed): The web presence of many of these entities looks the same because of what they were offered, not because this is what they all wanted. This might not be a bad thing (and we may even wish to perpetuate this) but it is useful to remember why things are the way they are.