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Institutional Repositories: Planning Guide

This guide was created and maintained by the Atla Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives Committee.

Planning Guide: Intro

Who should be involved in initial conversations (include a list of questions you could bring to early conversations); best practices, policies (prioritized material, e.g., diss & theses), how to organize etc.;

Who Should Be Involved?

Below are a few different phases in the process with some recommended roles/positions. Ideally, you'd want the most diverse cross-section of your community involved, e.g., student, faculty, and staff.

Initial Selection Phase

  • Scholarly Communications Librarian
  • Systems Librarian
  • Archivist
  • IT Representative
  • Research/Grants Officer
  • Teaching Faculty
  • Students
  • Library Student Workers

Implementation Phase

  • Scholarly Communications Librarian
  • Systems Librarian
  • Archivist
  • Multiple IT Representatives
  • Student Workers

Management and Curation Phase

  • Scholarly Communications Librarian
  • Archivist
  • Student Workers

Questions to Consider

Initial Selection Phase

  • How much faculty buy-in does your institution have during the early selection process?
  • Is your institution committed to ongoing costs, e.g., server storage, integration with other tools (Library Service Platform), and a potential increase in Library staffing in scholarly communication and/or archives?
  • Who will be the main depositors/stakeholders in the IR, student research, faculty research, both, or college records?
  • Depending on the main stakeholders, what types of data will be collected, i.e., if primarily faculty-driven, will student theses/dissertations be collected as a way to include student scholarship?
  • Will you be using multiple products or a single product as an IR? Are there complementary products if you choose a single product as your IR?
  • Can publishing in your IR be explicitly mentioned in the Promotion/Tenure process at your institution?

Implementation Phase

  • Do you have student workers to help with some implementation?
  • How will you communicate the progress of the implementation with your community to build continued buy-in?
  • What type of outreach and engagement needs to be done? Does this require a specific role on the implementation team?
  • What type of policies do you need to develop for different material types, e.g., Theses/Dissertations vs. faculty pre-prints?
  • What metadata standards and schemas do you plan on following in your IR?
  • What type of preservation plans are in place for certain materials that may be hosted in the IR?

Management and Curation Phase

  • If you are phasing different material types (starting with theses/dissertations), what are your next priorities?
  • Who are some super-users or IR champions at your institution you can tap into for spreading the word?
  • What are some professional development opportunities that the Library can host pertaining to scholarly communication and the use of IR?
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