A brief look back: PubMan Days 2011

PubMan Days 2011 took place at Harnack Haus, Berlin on 7^th and 8^th September 2011. We were delighted to welcome about 75 participants this year. The big topic of this year’s event was the integration of PubMan data and full texts into external websites. The agenda and the PowerPoint presentations can be found here.

Wednesday

Wednesday was dedicated to the PubMan users within the Max Planck Society. We started with a two hour user meeting. We constructively discussed topics concerning the future development of the PubMan repository. Thanks to our users for sharing your opinions, requirements and ideas with us. And a special thank you to our dear colleague Andrea Kulas for moderating and documenting the discussion.

At the same time our developer Michael Franke ran a hands-on workshop addressed to developers and technically responsible persons. The topic was the integration of PubMan data into institutional or individual websites. Many thanks to Dirk Wintergrün at the MPI for the History of Science for providing a room for this workshop.

In the afternoon the official part of the PubMan Days began. After an opening speech by Malte Dreyer, head of the department of “Development and Research” at the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) we heard three reports on migration to the PubMan repository. Patrick Daly from the MPI for Solar System Research reported about migration from BibTeX. Silvia Kortüm and Douglas Bahiense told us about migration of the legal institutes within the project Jus CMS. For connecting the institute’s content management system with PubMan a new proprietary interface was created. Karina Näthe and Roberto Cozatl from MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain sciences spoke about migration and integration of PubMan items into the institute’s homepage.

After a short coffee break Juliane Müller, repository manager of PubMan, presented several examples of PubMan integration and Michael Franke explained the technical requirements for PubMan. Ute Rusnak of the Fachinformationszentrum (FIZ) Karlsruhe introduced two PubMan Instances of the Leibniz Association. In the evening we had a cosy get-together with our participants at the Biergarten Louise.

Thursday

Thursday was dedicated to non-MPG organizations being interested in and using PubMan. After a welcome speech by Malte Dreyer and Juliane Müller we heard about two PubMan installations by Luis Zorita from UNED in Spain and Anders Conrad from the Royal Library of Denmark. After a coffee break Dr. Neil Jacobs, program director of JISC UK, enriched our event with a keynote on “The web as platform for scientific communication”. Special thanks to Dr. Neil Jacobs for his contribution.

After lunch the big topic was the current state of PubMan. Andrea Wuchner and Martin Boosen from Service Management of the MPDL presented a walkthrough of the current PubMan version. Diana Mewes from MPI for Chemical Ecology presented their example of system integration.

Being strengthened from coffee Michael Franke told us about search&export options in PubMan and about the CoNE Service. Finally Juliane Müller spoke about how to prepare an organization for the switch to PubMan.

We would like to thank all national and international speakers for participating the PubMan Days 2011 and sharing their inspiring contributions with us. Furthermore we want to thank all our participants for your interest in PubMan. We hope to see you again next year.

Your PubMan Team