EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Institutional Repositories

Using Personas to Understand the Needs and Goals of Institutional Repository Users

ckeller — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:36:36 -0500

This study shares the results of an effort to understand the needs and goals of future institutional repository (IR) users at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB). Due to underutilization of IRs at other institutions, the University Libraries at UCB decided it was imperative that insight into users' goals and needs of an IR be gained before design of the repository began. The libraries partnered with faculty and students with expertise in human-computer interaction to study user needs. The results of this study yielded "personas" describing different classes of potential IR users on university campuses, which can be used to guide IR architects in designing repositories that facilitate increased participation.

Identifying Factors of Success in Institutional Repository Development - Final Report

ckeller — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:11:28 -0500

With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the GSLIS Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign undertook a one-year pilot study to investigate advances in institutional repository (IR) development. The aim was to learn about successes and challenges experienced by IR initiatives at university libraries that had made a substantial commitment to developing and sustaining an IR. Three sites were studied using the comparative case study method. They were purposefully selected to represent varying approaches to IR development undertaken at research libraries with similar missions and users.

The UK Research Data Service Feasibility Study

ckeller — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:26:46 -0500

This UKRDS interim report is an early draft from the feasibility stage of the consultancy prepared for the UKRDS Steering Committee. It is intended as a working draft of the Feasibility Study report scheduled for completion in early August 2008. As such it reflects ongoing work and analysis and is subject to further changes and review. It has been produced to inform the steering committee of outcomes to date and solicit their feedback on key issues for the UKRDS feasibility study project.

The interim report includes an initial analysis of the survey carried out of some 700 researchers at the four case study sites (see Appendix A), regarding their current storage provision and future requirements.

Each case study site also provided information from their IT and Support Services regarding the services view of research funding and provision of data storage. From this, we have extracted some trends in the growth of data storage requirements and the planned provision to meet these requirements.

Please note information has been provided for the interim report by the case study sites and other third parties on the explicit understanding that it will be circulated to UKRDS Steering Committee members only. It is not for circulation to non-members and this is therefore a confidential and restricted report. A version of the feasibility study will be available in August for wider circulation

Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education

ckeller — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:51:48 -0500

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects. This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

At Libraries, Taking the (Really) Long View

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:46:16 -0500

Storing digital data is becoming more essential to the work of librarians, who are trying to think in terms of the next 100 years — a virtual eternity in computer time.

Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors Can Do to Ensure Open Access to Their Work Through Their Institution

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:29:28 -0500

Recently, on February 12, 2008, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard University took a landmark step. The faculty voted to adopt a policy requiring that faculty authors send an electronic copy of their scholarly articles to the university’s digital repository and that faculty authors automatically grant copyright permission to the university to archive and to distribute these articles unless a faculty member has waived the policy for a particular article. Essentially, the faculty voted to make open access to the results of their published journal articles the default policy for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University.

Inspired by the example set by the Harvard faculty, this White Paper is addressed to the faculty and administrators of academic institutions who support equitable access to scholarly research and knowledge, and who believe that the institution can play an important role as steward of the scholarly literature produced by its faculty. This paper discusses both the motivation and the process for establishing a binding institutional policy that automatically grants a copyright license from each faculty member to permit deposit of his or her peer-reviewed scholarly articles in institutional repositories, from which the works become available for others to read and cite.

Institutional Repositories and E-Journal Archiving: What Are We Learning?

elilly — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:21:43 -0600

The growing need for institutions to capture and maintain access to their administrative and academic information is driving the exploration of organizational models for digital preservation. Among the approaches being developed are institutional repositories and e-journal archives.

On the Threshold of Cyberscholarship

elilly — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:45:55 -0600

The widespread availability of digital content creates opportunities for new forms of research and scholarship that are qualitatively different from those represented in traditional scholarly literature. To capitalize on these opportunities, digital content must routinely be collected, managed, and preserved in ways that are significantly more rigorous than conventional methods. A new form of infrastructure is required to ensure that digital content, including research products and primary sources, is readily available, accessible, and usable.

Pooling Scholars’ Digital Resources

ckeller — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:11:46 -0600

George Mason U. and the Internet Archive are preparing a system that will let scholars upload documents to the public domain for sharing.

Census of Institutional Repositories in the U.S

ckeller — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:09:30 -0600

A Comparison Across Institutions at Different Stages of IR Development.