Positioning your repository

29th December 2016 | Category : Set up and launch

These materials can help you make the case for a repository to various stakeholders. You’ll find collection policies, content areas, and strategies for campus-wide engagement.

Building a Business Case for the Institutional Repository, bepress
Building the Business Case for an IR, presentation from ALA Midwinter 2009.

Digital Repositories at a Crossroads: Achieving Sustainable Success Through Campus-wide Engagement, Jean-Gabriel Bankier, Courtney Smith
Repository initiatives were, at the outset, driven by two noble desires: to remove barriers to access; and, to begin to address the scholarly communications crisis. For universities across the globe, this specifically meant a focus on collecting peer reviewed journal articles.  

Much More Than Storage: Re-positioning the Repository as a Cornerstone of Campus Collaboration, Amanda Makula, Connie Ghinazzi
“Repository” belies the dynamic potential of the IR. Much more than a publishing mechanism for campus scholarship and an archive of college history, it is an opportunity to partner with nearly every entity across campus in order to advance the institution’s mission and goals, to build community by uniting disparate groups around a common purpose, and to call attention to the library’s unique ability to facilitate campus-wide collaboration. 

Publishing Original Content in an Institutional Repository, Paul Royster
Institutional repositories (IRs) have been developed and promoted primarily as a means to re-publish scholarly content previously published elsewhere—usually in journals, festschriften, or collections of articles. This essay discusses the use of IRs as the originating publisher of materials not previously published elsewhere, and assesses their potential use as a viable “first resort” for scholarly publication and an already existing alternative to traditional commercial or university presses.

Repository Collection Policies, Jean-Gabriel Bankier, Courtney Smith
Institutional repositories have been established by most university libraries but their level of success has varied. Determining what belongs in such repositories has been the subject of some discussion but research would suggest that a broader rather than narrower compass is a positive approach to adopt. By seeking out a variety of content types, the library is able to initiate, renew, or redefine its relationship with faculty, departments, and administration, generating critical support for scholarly communication and repository initiatives.