J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Preserving, Promoting and Presenting Research Posters: USpace’s New Poster Archiving Service Lisa Chaufty Western CONTENTdm Users Group Meeting June 4, 2010

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Context

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY What is the purpose of an institutional repository?  “...a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution...it is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution.” (Lynch, 2003 as quoted in Bram, 2009).

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Is what we’re giving what they want? Set of services Stewardship Preservation Access Do creators see these as a real services? Not necessarily. Lack of faculty engagement “We built it but they didn’t come.” Traditional methods of access remain. Subscriptions paid for by the library

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY How do we give them what they want? Find new ways to provide value added services to our scholars and creators. Straddle two worlds: –Preservation (“Static”) –Service (“Active”)

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Archiving with relevance to faculty…

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY One Response

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Research posters…why? Important vehicle for sharing scholarly work Posters are the majority of presentations at some larger national conferences. –40,000+ calls for posters in the past year* Presented nationally as well as locally –Faculty and students Require a significant amount of time and resources to create *Google search 5/23/2010 on “call for posters” limited by date range 5/23/09-5/23/10.

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY USpace’s Poster Archiving Service

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY USpace + Trapeze Media Solutions Trapeze Media Solutions –Recent start-up by a former graduate student at the University of Utah –Provide poster conversion services for USpace. PDFs or PowerPoint slides submitted to USpace are converted by the vendor to an interactive Flash file. –Trapeze Interactive Poster –Viewable in any browser, but require Adobe Flash Player 10 USpace links to poster content on vendor’s server. Raw content is maintained on secure server with vendor. –Our content will be furnished to us if we leave vendor

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Benefits to campus creators and the library Research posters are preserved and presented in an attractive and interactive format. Library service contributes a new type of knowledge product. How can I best represent the concepts displayed in my poster? Would a video flesh out this idea more? Library could have role in supporting virtual poster presentations.

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Having a Role in Creation

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY What’s Next?

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Outreach challenges Develop library liaison relations to departments. ARL report: “Positioning Liaison Librarians for the 21st Century.” August, Find more connections to departments who could benefit from this service; who value the research poster as a scholarly product to be preserved. We need to do the research! –Study department Web sites to learn more about what they value as a department in terms of scholarship. Develop opportunities for virtual presentation.

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Technical challenges Train vendor to batch upload URLs through Project Client. The vendor currently uploads manually through web interface. Scalability will become an issue as we get more submissions. Press vendor to add a search function to our virtual poster wall and to each poster in the collection. Redesign USpace website to feature posters more prominently. Ascertain if it is possible to serve posters up natively with Clip-imp.

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY References, I Bankier, Jean-Gabriel, “Digital Repositories at a Crossroads: Achieving Sustainable Success through Campus-wide Engagement.” Accessed at “Female Science Professor” (pseudonym), “The Conference Poster Child, ” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Accessed at Conference-Poster-Child/63810/. Conference-Poster-Child/63810/ Hahn, Karla. “Introduction: Positioning Liaison Librarians for the 21st century,” Research Library Issues (RLI), no. 265 (August 2009): 1-2. Accessed at Kirchner, Joy. “Scholarly Communications: Planning for the Integration of Liaison Librarian Roles,” RLI, no. 265 (August 2009): Accessed at

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY References, 2 Lynch, Clifford A. “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age” ARL, no. 226 (February 2003): 1-7. Accessed at Luyten, Bram. “The Institutional Repository in and beyond,” paper submitted to the Online Information Conference, 2009 (December 2009): Zupko, Andrew J. and DuVall, Scott L., “Preserving Academic Poster Content.” Accessed at

J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY Questions? Please contact me if you would like more information! Lisa Chaufty IR Coordinator J. Willard Marriott Library