Institutional Repositories:
Content and Advocacy
Cokie Anderson, Associate Professor
Electronic Publishing Center
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK USA
cokie.anderson@okstate.edu

The #1 Challenge for IR’s
2006 ARL Survey found that

getting content was the biggest
problem for those implementing
IR’s.
40% of respondents found it “difficult”

23% found it “very difficult”

Two of the top 3 challenges: “building

content” and “faculty engagement”

But IR’s are brilliant!
Why won’t the faculty use it?
Afraid it will interfere with formal

publication or patentability
Concern over ownership rights

Will their work become the property of

the university?
Will their work be stolen?

Don’t want to bother

Already feel overworked and underpaid


How can we get them to
participate?
Make it mandatory

Controversial method

Use anthropology (U of Rochester NY)

Hire someone to observe faculty in their

natural habitat and determine where IR
could fit into their workflow
Advocacy (or in the US, Marketing)

Educate and persuade


IR Advocacy Techniques
Educate faculty about the

advantages of an IR
Identify opinion leader(s) to be

early adopter and champion
Make it easy for them!

Harvest citations and issue

invitations

Advantages of Participation
Increased citation of their work (one

study found 300% increase)
Articles can be found by Google®

They maintain ownership of works

No personal website maintenance

No broken URLs

Preservation, back-up and migration

of files (just say “WordStar”)

Making it easy
Offer authoring tools, user-friendly

submission interfaces, help line
Do most of the work on the library

side
Faculty submits work in any format

Library staff prepares submissions for

deposit in IR
Let them know it’s working

E-mail citation stats


Outreach Efforts
Mass e-mails to faculty

Library subject specialists liaisons

Peer-to-peer

Surveys

Presentations/Symposia

Follow up


Resources
Bailey, C. W. et al. (2006) ARL SPEC Kit

292: Institutional Repositories. Online:
http://www.arl.org
Branschofsky, M. (2004) Using

Marketing Techniques to Encourage
Growth of DSpace at MIT. Online:
http://sparc.org
Gibbons, S. (2004 ) Aligning Content

Recruitment Strategies with Faculty
Work Practices. Online: http://sparc.org

Resources
Jones, R., Andrew, T., MacColl, J. (2006)

The Institutional Repository. Oxford:
Chandos Publishing
Ober, J. (2004) IR Content & Service

Expansion: the Case of eScholarship.
Online: http://sparc.org