The Importance of an Institutional Repository A Faculty

The Importance of an Institutional Repository: A Faculty Perspective Brian Kennelly, Modern Languages & Literatures

Faculty Capacity • Generate original scholarship and disseminate knowledge • Keep up in field, do research and share with others • Principal information contributor • End user • Stakeholder • Change agent

In a nutshell • Tangible and meaningful indicators of quality • Professional visibility and awareness • Intellectual GPS

Bridge Beyond Ivory Tower • Scientific, societal, and economic relevance of research activities • Wider audience • Foster and/or expand society’s role in peer review

Access & Dissemination

• Increased readership (new audiences) • Increased research • Diminished divides • Location and retrieval • Higher citation rates • Quantifiable results

Collegiality & Interdisciplinarity

• • Collegiality Academic and institutional silos Global networking Interdisciplinary research and discovery

Vis-A-Vis “Traditional” Scholarly Publishing

• Difficult publishing climate • Strained publishing model • Response to crisis

• Two philosophical camps • New ecosystem • Stimulate innovation • Weaken monopolistic impact of current system

• Economic benefit • Junior colleagues • Page number restraints • Digital university press/es

Tenure, Promotion, and Assessment • Easy access • Thinner binders • Secure • Evidence

Teaching and Advising • Student (e-)portfolios • Senior (e-)projects • Class notes • Lectures

Enhances library’s relevance to faculty

Challenges • Copyright permissions/clearances • Publisher resistance • Insecurity • Fear of plagiarism • Fear by association • “Publishing”?

Possibilities • Versions • Collaborative authoring • Syllabi, notes, outlines, lectures, images, illustrations • Reward structure • Readership?

Success • Attitudinal factors • Essential infrastructure

Works Consulted • Crow, Raym. “The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper. ” www. arl. org/sparc • Davis, Philip M. and Matthew J. L. Connolly. “Evaluating the Reasons for Non-use of Cornell University’s Installation of DSpace. ” D-Lib Magazine 13. 3 -4 (2007). http: //www. dlib. org/dlib/march 07/davis/03 davis. html • Foster, Nancy Fried and Susan Gibbons. “Understanding Faculty to Improve Content Recruitment for Institutional Repositories. ” D-Lib Magazine 11. 1 (2005). http: //www. dlib. org/dlib/january 05/foster/01 foster. html • Howard, Jennifer. “The Need for a Broader Concept of Publishing in the Digital Age. ” The Chronicle of Higher Education. 3 August 2007. http: //chronicle. com/weekly/v 53/i 48/48 a 01401. html • “Institutional Repositories: DOA? ” Digital. Koans: What is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading? http: //digital-scholarship. org/digitalkoans/2007/08/21/institutional-repositories-doa/ • Kim, Jihyun. “Motivating and Impeding Factors Affecting Faculty Contribution to Institutional Repositories. ” Journal of Digital Information 8. 2 (2007). http: //journals. tdl. org/jodi/article/view/193/177 • Poynder, Richard. “Clear blue water. ” http: //creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2. 0