Building a Successful Law Repository with Limited Resources

Institutional repositories (IRs) aren’t just for big schools with big budgets; they are quickly developing into essential components of every law library’s information architecture in the digital age. With the right technology and a clear vision in place, institutions of any size can build a successful showcase for the full range of their research and scholarship.

At Santa Clara Law School, David Holt has strategically leveraged limited resources to build Santa Clara Law Digital Commons into a rich and diverse repository that already contains nearly 4,000 objects and has logged over 300,000 downloads from over 150 countries in the past year—all without a single full-time employee exclusively devoted to the project. In this webinar, David outlines some keys to his success:

  • Defining the mission and setting goals for the repository
  • Developing collections: Law reviews, special collections, faculty publications, and beyond
  • Distributing workflows economically
  • Encouraging faculty participation
  • Promoting the IR

The presentation is of interest for law schools who are considering launching a repository as well as those who are in the mature stages of their IR initiatives.