Repository items can look nice!
I’d just like to take a moment to showcase a recent ORO entry, which I think demonstrates how a repository record can actually look reasonably attractive, and offer a bit more other than just a single-point entry for one particular article, or item.
A number of OU authors have recently been involved (as editors and contributors) in the publication of a book entitled “Environment, Development, and Sustainability: Perspectives and cases from around the world”. The main entry in ORO for this book can be found here: http://oro.open.ac.uk/19088.
As you will see when you visit the page in ORO, in the “Extra Information” field we have provided links through to the individual book chapter records in ORO by OU contributors. You will also see that three of the links indicate that the full text is openly available (we received permission from Oxford University Press to do this). If you then choose one of the chapters to click through to, you will see that there is also a link back to the main book entry. Thus, if someone arrives at one of the individual chapters (say via a Google search), they can then very easily find out more information about the book as a whole.
I would certainly encourage OU academics to consider cross-linking in this way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a book and its associated chapters; it could, for example, be a series of related journal articles. If anyone is interested in doing this, do please get in touch.
On a related note, we are planning to make author names clickable in the near future, so that if someone comes across a particular article by an OU author, they can, with one click, see a list of all publications on ORO by that same author. Watch this space!