Suzanne Bell and Nathan Sarr
University of Rochester River Campus Libraries
Re-engineering the Institutional Repository to Engage Users
Nice to meet you!
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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
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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
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Install it and they will…
S. Bell/N. Sarr - University of Rochester River Campus LibrariesHosted by ALCTS
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Taking a closer look at faculty
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IMLS Grant: $103,546 1 year Main objectives
Provide insight into how faculty do their work
Customize DSpace for faculty
“Work Practice” studies
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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
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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
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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?
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The ultimate revelations of all this user research…
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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
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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
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S. Bell/N. Sarr - University of Rochester River Campus LibrariesHosted by ALCTS
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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
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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
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LIVE DEMOWhat does this all mean? Let’s do a submission!
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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…
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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
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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
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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
S. Bell/N. Sarr - University of Rochester River Campus LibrariesHosted by ALCTS
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Final Poll & Questions
Nathan Sarr & Suzanne Bell
River Campus Libraries
University of Rochester
http://www.irplus.org
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