Institutional Repositories: Content and Advocacy Cokie Anderson, Associate Professor Electronic Publishing Center Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK USA

The #1 Challenge for IR’s  2006 ARL Survey found that getting content was the biggest problem for those implementing IR’s. 40% of respondents found it “difficult” 23% found it “very difficult” Two of the top 3 challenges: “building content” and “faculty engagement”

But IR’s are brilliant! Why won’t the faculty use it?  Afraid it will interfere with formal publication or patentability  Concern over ownership rights Will their work become the property of the university? Will their work be stolen?  Don’t want to bother Already feel overworked and underpaid

How can we get them to participate?  Make it mandatory Controversial method  Use anthropology (U of Rochester NY) Hire someone to observe faculty in their natural habitat and determine where IR could fit into their workflow  Advocacy (or in the US, Marketing) Educate and persuade

IR Advocacy Techniques  Educate faculty about the advantages of an IR  Identify opinion leader(s) to be early adopter and champion  Make it easy for them!  Harvest citations and issue invitations

Advantages of Participation  Increased citation of their work (one study found 300% increase)  Articles can be found by Google®  They maintain ownership of works  No personal website maintenance  No broken URLs  Preservation, back-up and migration of files (just say “WordStar”)

Making it easy  Offer authoring tools, user-friendly submission interfaces, help line  Do most of the work on the library side Faculty submits work in any format Library staff prepares submissions for deposit in IR  Let them know it’s working citation stats

Outreach Efforts  Mass s to faculty  Library subject specialists liaisons  Peer-to-peer  Surveys  Presentations/Symposia  Follow up

Resources  Bailey, C. W. et al. (2006) ARL SPEC Kit 292: Institutional Repositories. Online:  Branschofsky, M. (2004) Using Marketing Techniques to Encourage Growth of DSpace at MIT. Online:  Gibbons, S. (2004 ) Aligning Content Recruitment Strategies with Faculty Work Practices. Online:

Resources  Jones, R., Andrew, T., MacColl, J. (2006) The Institutional Repository. Oxford: Chandos Publishing  Ober, J. (2004) IR Content & Service Expansion: the Case of eScholarship. Online: