2007

It's Up and Running, Now What? Strategies for Building Content in an Institutional Repository

Speaker: Catherine M. Jannik, Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center
Program blurb: In August 2004, Georgia Tech Library launched SMARTech with approximately 2,500 legacy items. In the beginning, we focused on authors self-archiving pre-prints and postprints, research and technical reports, and electronic theses and dissertations. As interest in archiving other materials increased and we realized that our faculty was not properly motivated to submit their own work, we changed our approach to collecting materials for our institutional repository and added a dark archive for strictly archival material. We have launched an electronic publishing service, Epage @ Tech, to support the creation and capture of e-journals, conferences, and lecture series to facilitate scholarly communication. As we provide these tools to faculty to accomplish their goals and they in turn become more aware of the need for repositories, we are more likely to convince them to deposit their personal materials. We will discuss:
· The technical support and training we provide departments to digitize and submit their own materials
· How we partner with departments to capture materials using their current electronic workflows
· How we provide production services to support e-journals, conferences, and the capture of lecture series, symposia, and the like
· Planned services to introduce these services into individual faculty members’ workflows
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Session had about 37 in audience

NOTES:
Technology easy, it’s the social conditions and psychology of the institution
By the 2nd semester of ETD grad school was sold and wanted to make ETD required
Were able to start with “legacy materials”
Pre and post prints very difficult to get from faculty
Self submission never happened – library went to departments to get their stuff
Efforts to get self submissions had the effect of marketing the service to the campus
Alumni association “mines” the student yearbook They got their alumni association to do the scanning and PDF production
Student newspaper gives them their online issues in e-format
Download stats come from the “bitstream view” count.
Need to educate users to use the item handle not the download link
“We never asked people to catalog the books themselves that they requested” – so needed to develop a service layer for IR

Services:
Aiding depts in capturing things that now disappear – lectures, presentation of thesis equivalent performances
Offering server space as a library service to the CAMPUS.
Taking grant files when the agency requires that the product must be kept forever (sustainability). NSF grant applicants at Georgia Tech asked for letter from library stating they can make their research available forever.
Publish articles using open journal system software OJS from Public Knowledge Systems

OUTREACH:
Inserting themselves into departmental communication flow – like announcement systems, etc.
Research funded reports that are marked “final” the Office of Sponsored Programs will transmit the report & metadata (in the “coming soon we hope” category)
Presentations may have already gotten permissions for public access, or you can try and get it after the fact, or make it restricted to campus only
Do innovative things like taping students as they install an exhibit to go with exhibit photos or other materials

QUESTIONS FROM AUDIENCE:
How do users respond to the epageTech service offering?
They don’t know what the library is taking about. Faculty are concerned about getting tenure credit for depositing with IR or creating an open source journal.
They like it when they understand it after they’ve had enough of their time to explain it.

Staffing levels?
I person worked with Systems, Archives, etc. IR architect joined 6 monhths, then a web designer, every 6 months got a new person, as of July 1st – Digital Initiatives is 6 people but not organized that way. Library has been reorganized.

What about loading scientific data?
Not yet.

Statistics on self submission vs. library submisstion?
Low self-sub, library input is growing

Multimedia materials – does metatdata describe the whole thing or the parts?
Links can be created among different parts, but most described as a whole.

Is multimedia streaming – is it fully encapsulated or coming from another server?
Streaming video is located on IT services – launches an external application.

How do you handle removal of item?
“We don’t”. If anyone asks we say no. Moved to the dark archive. If it is illegal or unethical they will remove it.

When you get datasets will you still be using dSpace.
Probably not, might use Fedora, can’t predict