From: June Schmidt <JSchmidt_at_library.msstate.edu>
This message is the first in a series of four that will summarize the
summer 2006 discussions of the Collection Development Librarians of
Academic Libraries Discussion Group.
Facilitator: Brian Quinn, Texas Tech
Reporter: Laura Salmon, LexisNexis
Universities represented at this roundtable discussion included Texas
Tech, University of California at Santa Barbara, Purdue, Adelphi,
Brigham Young and University of British Columbia. Four of the six
universities have institutional repositories.
How are your institutional repository collections organized or
structured?
(1) Subject or interest group
(2) Contributing department or unit
What kinds of materials are being collected?
(1) Special interest and interdisciplinary collections designed to
garner interest and support. Examples include sheet music holdings,
information about the Olympics
(2) Electronic dissertations
(3) Faculty papers
(4) Technical reports
(5) Some open access journals
(6) Course syllabi
(7) Faculty Curriculum Vita (CV)
(8) Faculty research data sets (planned for future inclusion after
curating and applying metadata)
(9) Media (being considered for future inclusion)
Discussants concurred that syllabi and CV are appropriate IR inclusions
since they are part of the history of the institution. Different
approaches were taken by the various institutions represented. Texas
Tech plans to post syllabi on a separate web page that will include
links to appropriate full text documents. Other universities had created
personal spaces within the IR where faculty members could post both
syllabi and CV. Two institutions are considering the creation of a My CV
site that would link CV to faculty publications. CSAs Community of
Scholars database, which collects data about faculty and provides web
links to the CV, could be used to supplement such a site.
What are you excluding from your repository? All institutions exclude
copyrighted works if the copyright holders do not grant rights for
inclusion. Their policies have focused more on what to include rather
than what to exclude.
What access do you provide to the IR? Though not widely known,
Californias archive is accessible to the public. The University of
British Columbia is considering making some areas available for public
access, while other areas will require authentication. Some repositories
make their information confidential for six months to a year in order to
solve patent and other confidentiality issues typically encountered.
Who administers the IR? Purdue encourages its faculty to self-submit
their papers but is considering having a coordinator create a checklist
of steps to complete before faculty items are published in the IR. The
Digital Initiatives Librarian fulfills this responsibility at the
University of British Columbia. The California e-Scholarship Archive has
the process, related instructions, and contacts for questions posted on
their website.
Have you written a collection development policy for your IR? The four
institutions with IRs reported work in progress on a written IR
collection development policy. All acknowledged the importance of
involving selectors in deciding what should be included.
What has been the response from faculty? How do you encourage faculty
participation? What role do faculty play in collection development? Most
institutions reported some resistance from faculty because they have
their own websites or dont view the institutional repository as "their
place."
The group acknowledged the importance of promoting the IR as an
institutional resource rather than a library resource. One participant
noted two lines of reasoning to encourage faculty to participate: (1)
the IR can archive faculty research for eternity and (2) inclusion in
the IR can increase citations to faculty work since it becomes
searchable via Google and other search engines.
The coordinator of the California e-Scholarship Archive has visited all
ten campuses of the university and works closely with the chancellors to
emphasize the value of the resource for their faculty. They are trying
to make participation a mark of distinction for the faculty. Departments
are informed that the IR can both store and provide indexing for faculty
papers. Some faculty have been very diligent about submitting materials
while others have been less so. An interesting suggestion being
considered by two of the institutions is mandatory submission to the IR
of work by the library faculty. Librarians could thus serve as an
example for the rest of the faculty.
Reported edited and abridged by June Schmidt, Chair.
June Schmidt
Associate Dean for Technical Services
Mitchell Memorial Library
P.O. Box 5408
Mississippi State, MS 39762
662-325-7672
Received on Sun Jul 30 2006 - 01:24:17 EDT