Suzanne Bell and Nathan Sarr University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Re-engineering the Institutional Repository to Engage Users.

Suzanne Bell and Nathan Sarr

University of Rochester River Campus Libraries

Re-engineering the Institutional Repository to Engage Users

Nice to meet you!

S. Bell/N. Sarr - University of Rochester River Campus LibrariesHosted by ALCTS

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services 2

Nate Sarr Suzanne Bell

University of Rochester

Private university founded in 1850 3 campuses:

The College (incl. grad schools of Education, Business) Eastman School of Music University of Rochester Medical Center

4608 undergrads, 2900 grad students, 1258 faculty Carnegie Level I research university Institutional Repository established 2003



Repository: First Steps

2002 Library Investigates IR Software Chose DSpace

Support a variety of formats Digital preservation Control Access Metadata Open Source

Three initial collections (one from each campus) March 2003 UR Research launched



Install it and they will…



Taking a closer look at faculty



IMLS Grant: $103,546 1 year Main objectives

Provide insight into how faculty do their work

Customize DSpace for faculty

“Work Practice” studies



Detailed observations in 5 departments, telephone interviews with several more

30 in situ videotaped faculty interviews

Focused specifically on use of digital tools and documents in research and authoring

Data gathering



Walk us through your research process Introduce us to your environment Engage us in your research interests

Record/Video tape everything Transcripts Analysis by diverse group of people

Co-viewing Structured exercises Brainstorming



Stopgap; Do some more

Researcher pages – add-on to Dspace IMLS Grant #2: study graduate students

(2006-08) - $323,804 How do they conduct research? What

resources do they use? What are their writing practices?

How do they collaborate with other students and their advisor?



The ultimate revelations of all this user research…



The repository needs to…

Become part of the users’ normal workflow Be part of the research process Support collaboration Make publishing into the repository easy Focus on the user as an individual and provide

positive feedback Give users control over their work



Rethinking the Repository: IR+

Support Faculty and Graduate students Personal document management system –

safely store and manage files Support for easy collaboration

Version control Personalization – the Researcher Page

More options, flexibility Personal control: you entered it, you can edit it





User workspace - private

Institutional repository –

generally public

Researcher pages - public

IR+ provides…

Personal workspaceYour files, organized your wayShare filesTrack versions

Researcher Pages to showcase work Easy “publishing” into the IR Stats: at every level



Keep that metadata clean!

IR+ has a person name authority system

Uses control lists as much as possible for metadata entry

Makes possible a number of interesting information displays



LIVE DEMOWhat does this all mean? Let’s do a submission!



Migration

There weren’t any terrible disasters Does require the knowledge of a

developer No data was lost… But a lot of data needed to be cleaned up

and fixed Still, all in all…



Show me the…

Full time developer plus 1 ~15 month contract developer to write IR+

Now: still 1 full time developer 30% of a librarian Servers, ~5% of a server admin



Did we engage users?

Users with content in workspace: 100 Public researchers: 40 Shared files: 747 UR graduate students: 140 UR faculty: 86 UR staff: 71 Users registered as collaborators: 53



IR+ - Summing Up

Make the repository part of the users’ normal workflow

Share, showcase, control Controlled approach to metadata great

by-products and benefits Make admin easy


The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services

Final Poll & Questions

Nathan Sarr & Suzanne Bell

River Campus Libraries

University of Rochester

[email protected]

[email protected]

http://www.irplus.org

22S. Bell/N. Sarr - University of Rochester River Campus LibrariesHosted by ALCTS

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services

Suzanne Bell and Nathan Sarr University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Re-engineering the Institutional Repository to Engage Users.

Documents

sarr university

library collections

technical services

authoring slide

initial collections

user research

nate sarrsuzanne bell

support faculty