Promita Chatterji
Product Team
bepress
Since the creation of institutional repositories in the early 2000s, users have debated both their role and their success, or lack thereof. How do the primary goals of a repository affect its sustainability and relevance on campus? Drawing from a diverse community of over 500 institutions, we find that schools with thriving institutional repository programs tend to be the ones that eschew disrupting the academic publishing model and instead prioritize existing institutional goals. Rather than persuade campus groups to come to them, these libraries proactively build their repository services around the campus’s most pressing needs. In this project briefing, we discuss what it means to integrate the institutional repository into the core goals and activities of an institution. We present possible frameworks for assessing the level of campus-wide adoption, from technical measurements like linking, embedding, and uploading to nontechnical expressions of support, including funding. We share our findings about the types of repository content that universities value most. Finally, we will discuss how this research has inspired bepress’s development direction toward more flexible and seamless embedding of researcher profiles, custom expertise directories, and readership and impact analytics. Attendees will come away with concrete ideas for how to engage various campus groups in ways that lead to sustainable, university-wide programs far beyond the scope of the traditional institutional repository.
