Building a Digital Repository Program with Limited Resources

Abby Clobridge

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781843345961
• eBook ISBN: 9781780630458
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Computer Science

Whether you are just starting to create a digital repository or your institution already has a fully-developed program, this book provides strategies for building and maintaining a high-use, cohesive, and fiscally-responsible repository with collections that showcase your institution. The book explains how to strategically select projects tied to your institution's goals, create processes and workflows designed to support a fully-functioning program, and creatively utilize existing resources. The benefits of taking a holistic approach to creating a digital repository program rather than focusing only on individual collections are discussed. Case studies and best practices from various institutions round out the author's practical suggestions. - Focuses on the bigger picture of repository work (creating a unified, cohesive program) but also includes suggestions for effectively implementing digital projects of all shapes and sizes - Focuses on doing more with less – strategies that are perfect for smaller institutions or institutions which want to be fiscally responsible when it comes to building and sustaining digital repository programs - Includes ready-to-use templates, worksheets, workshop exercises, and assessment tools written by the author

Part One

1

Introduction

Right now, we are working at an exciting point in the history of libraries. External changes in the information landscape, technology, and users’ behavior are all creating a vastly different environment from that of even five years ago. Digital repositories are one area in which we can apply traditional library expertise in an entirely new environment. Fundamentally, the work is the same: libraries collect, curate, disseminate, and preserve information. But in practical terms, the day-to-day work is vastly different, which has implications for staffing and resource allocation.

At academic institutions, one primary group of digital repository users is undergraduates. In general, undergraduate students are part of Generation Y – the Net Generation. While studies routinely show that students’ in-depth technical skills are not as advanced as faculty hope or assume, students have grown up with the Internet, computers, high-quality graphics, and digital media. They came to college with expectations of one-stop shopping (Amazon), immediate acquisitions of digital media (iTunes downloads), and 24/7 access (the Internet is always open and can be accessed from anywhere). And so library services such as mediated interlibrary loan with multi-day wait periods and a lack of federated searching across article databases confound our users.

Opportunities for libraries

A digital repository program – and the services offered around it – is one area in which we have the potential to shine. It is an area in which librarians can demonstrate their value. Digital repository work gets the library out of the library – it enables us to interact with faculty and administrators in new ways and at different points in their workflow. For administrators, libraries can offer the skills and expertise of librarians to help collect and catalog information and digital objects that support the business needs of the institution and shifts the archival role of libraries from an analog to digital (or digital plus analog) environment.

A digital repository program can create new opportunities to support faculty teaching and scholarship. If a repository program is scoped out to include supporting teaching and learning initiatives, it has the potential to create new opportunities for partnerships to develop between faculty, repository staff, and instructional technologists. Faculty are increasingly teaching with digital objects (images, video, digitized text-based objects) and would benefit from assistance from library, repository, or instructional technology staff to identify, collect, and organize materials; teach students how to use digital objects for specific projects; develop new projects that utilize digital objects and emerging technologies; adapt existing projects to better utilize emerging technologies; collect, disseminate, and preserve digital objects they or their students create as a result of such projects.

On the research side, faculty members at many institutions who are early in their careers are running into a wall getting credit towards tenure for scholarly digital projects. The library is in an ideal position to be an advocate for this type of project and can help faculty showcase and disseminate their digital projects.

We can also serve as partners in the publishing process. By working with faculty from the earliest stages of a research project to when they are shopping proposals all the way through to the final stages of depositing completed manuscripts into repositories, the library is providing better service to faculty at their points of need. Plus, it allows us to have a much deeper understanding of faculty workflows. The University of Rochester has done a great deal of research examining faculty research behavior and what researchers want.¹ Now libraries need to apply this research to their own institutions so we can develop repository services that support existing faculty workflows and get scholarship deposited into the appropriate repositories.

Offering a set of services directly tied to the digital environment can be a way for the library to reach students as well, depending on the scope and focus of the repository program. Services can be designed to support the curriculum but also students’ co-curricular lives. Some examples include:

Student publications: collecting, cataloging, disseminating literary magazines, political publications, yearbooks, student newspapers.

Electronic portfolios: teaching students how to create electronic portfolios, using repository systems to archive electronic portfolios.

Workshops: offering instructional sessions on topics such as digital photography, working with digital images, editing digital video, finding and (legally) using music for video projects.

With shrinking budgets, it is paramount that libraries are able to demonstrate their value – and shift their services to add value in new ways.

Definitions

Below are definitions for some key phrases and terms. Some of these concepts are used in slightly different ways, so I am including definitions on how they will be used throughout this book.

Types of digital objects

Digital object: Any type of electronic file. Within the context of digital repositories, most often used to describe audio, video, images, or text-based documents.

Born-digital object: An electronic file or set of files comprising an object that was electronically created. Examples: a word processing file, an image captured by a digital camera.

Compound object: A set of electronic files and the structural relationship between them; all of these files together comprise a complete digital object. Example: the pages within a chapter within a book.

Digital surrogate: A digital version of an object, one that ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of figures
• About the author
• Part One
• Part Two
• Concluding thoughts
• Appendix 1: Introduction to metadata workshop
• Appendix 2: The World War II Poster Project
• Bibliography
• Index