The Development of an IR in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts College: The Macalester College Experience Terri Fishel Library Director ALA Midwinter, Philadelphia January 13, 2008 1/13/2008

Introduction Background – Macalester College Planning - efforts leading to IR Selection - why DigitalCommons Adding Content Collaboration – key component Current projects Integration with Selected Works Future What I will cover briefly – more details can be found in our DigitalCommons via reports 1/13/2008

Background Macalester College – 1850 undergraduates, 150 FTE faculty Early initiative was focused on digital images ContentDM as possible solution Limitations No new staff Sustainable with minimum support from IT Integrated with other systems and services Initiative grew out of discussions that began in 1999 to find a campus-wide solution to for storing, managing, and cataloging digital images that could be used for classroom teaching and research projects – 8 long years due to personnel changes, faculty leaving, new information technologists being hired, new technology available. Minimum support from IT due to migration to new administrative system 1/13/2008

Planning Digital Assets Management (DAM) working group – established 2005 Proposal to develop a digitization program – March 2005 Set of services to capture and preserve information that is formatted digitally on campus Take advantage of new tools and publishing models Enhance access to materials for teaching and scholarship Means of preserving content Enhance access to campus publications through the web using emerging tools such as Google Scholar Pilot project to start an IR DAM = formed under previous reporting structure when library was merged with IT a successful partnership, after some failed attempts Pilot project to use DigitalCommons - funding from library budget “A Proposal for Starting a Program of Digital Assets Management at Macalester College”. Revised March 24, 2005 Pilot project based on seeing a demonstration of DC at Oberlin in 2004 1/13/2008

Selection of DigitalCommons Annual Oberlin Meeting, San Antonio, 2004 Introduced by four private colleges; additional schools joined – led to LASR LASR=Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository Features Support Self-deposit feature Price Remote Hosting Easy implementation – minimal training Collaborative project While we were exploring digital images management with the campus, the opportunity to use Digital Commons came along. I saw a demonstration at an Oberlin Directors meeting and could see immediate applications for managing networked access to our student honor projects – high demand, but limited access Need for a program that was sustainable, could be integrated into existing workflows, and no new staff saw how it could fill an immediate need to make Honors papers accessible – at the time we did not have an archivist; we catalog our projects and we had ILL demand – wanted to minimize requests to get into an unstaffed archives and decrease ILL burden Price was right,, support and hosting was ideal – DC license includes set-up, training, support, documentation, upgrades and hosting LASR has gone onto DSpace. 1/13/2008

Planning Administrative support Master plan http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/annrep/4 Outcomes and benefits Open access publishing model Priorities Rights Management Assessment Start with several small projects Administrative support – VP for Library & Information Services Master plan developed from original proposal Start small to integrate into existing workflow, identify needs, develop expertise Presentation to senior staff members – Provost, Academic Dean 1/13/2008

Initial Focus Student honors projects Faculty publications Restricted access for paper Digitized for ILL Wanted networked access Faculty publications Effort to engage faculty in scholarly communication issues Provide a single location – showcase as well as preserve 1/13/2008

Initial Efforts Student papers Honors projects 2005 10 papers selected by departments Geography early adopter Honors projects 2006 31 out of 78 Honors projects 2007 36 out of 63 with 22 more when CD with digitized copies arrives Purchased in April 2005, papers loaded in May 2005 1/13/2008

Screen capture – ability to add some customization – “organizing and sharing the creative works of the Macalester College community” – trying for something distinctive 1/13/2008

Adding Content Journals – student, peer-reviewed Macalester Journal of Philosophy (paper editions prior to DigitalCommons) Macalester Islam Journal Studies in Mediterranean Antiquities & Classics ISSNs The first was MacJPhil. It was a print departmental journal with articles written by students. A casual conversation between a faculty person who was a library rep started us down the journal road. The Islam Journal came to Digital Commons because of our close collaboration with IT (Michael Nelson, AIA). Tell the story. Michael was also instrumental in getting SMAC to be the first peer-reviewed journal in DigitalCommons@macalester.edu. We worked with the faculty to obtain the ISSN for the two newer journals 1/13/2008

Adding More Content Student award papers Finding them Getting them DeWitt Wallace Library Reports Strategic plan 2006-2010 Report on Goals for 2005 DAM master plan Oral histories transcriptions Faculty Publications - Scholarly Communication Issues Janet, project manager, checks out names of students who have received awards at conferences in our campus newsletter - Bulletin. The Bulletin, published bi-weekly electronically by College Relations, is the official campus newsletter. Traditionally, it has carried announcements of meetings, speakers and campus-wide events, faculty and staff appearances and publications.. I have uploaded: the library’s strategic plan for 2006-2010, the report on Goals for 2005, and the DAM master plan. 2 oral history transcripts are ready to be loaded. We tested having audio, but have decided to focus on text only. 1/13/2008

Collaboration Administrative Departments Academic Departments ITS and the AIAs (Instructional Technologists) Provost College Relations Back/future issues of Macalester International Current/future issues of Macalester Today Link from Admissions/Academics page to DC Academic Departments Links to Digital Commons Institute for Global Citizenship and International Studies Department The beginnings of our IR - Digital Commons were based on collaboration. Close collaboration with IT, key faculty, academic departments and administrative departments. One of those admin departments is College Relations. Our web coordinator was talking to the Director of Publications in College Relations at a meeting and she said it would be a good thing to get the Mac International online - $1400 for back issues. Also through College Relations, we are having Bildhaan digitized. $350. Institute Bildhaan International Roundtable papers International Studies and Programming Annual Report Institute annual reports 1/13/2008

What we like about Digital Commons Customizable http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/ Paper of the day Ten most popular downloads Number of Full-text downloads last week Number of Full-text downloads since the beginning Author search Support – especially after bepress took ownership 1/13/2008

Faculty comment “This is an important way of sharing your insights with the broader scholarly community (and it is another way of giving back - and moving away from a model of extractive research). ” Bill Mosley – from Janet; unsolicited support “This is an important way of sharing your insights with the broader scholarly community (and it is another way of giving back - and moving away from a model of extractive research).  I really hope you will share your honors thesis in this format - in addition to the traditional paper copy.” 1/13/2008

Statistics 2005 1507 FT downloads 2006 9302 FT downloads 1507 are for Honors Projects 2006 9302 FT downloads 6357 are for Honors Projects 2007 21,673 FT downloads 13,592 are for Honors Projects Where we are currently Next development is transition to Selected Works 1/13/2008

Selected Works Transition from Faculty/Research Publications pages www2.macalester.edu/facultypubs/ Coincided with change from Personal Pages as part of Digitalcommons Goal – by end of January have page for each faculty person on campus Content linked from Digital Commons, but system is also open URL Training – liaisons, then faculty Faculty example - http://works.bepress.com/joan_ostrove Most recent development is SelectedWorks is a web-based service that enables institutions to provide faculty with clean, elegantly designed scholarly publication pages. Sites are custom designed to match the look and feel of your institutional or departmental web pages and come fully supported. We want a link to Digital Commons overall Several sessions held for library liaisons to help faculty with Selected Works. 1/13/2008

Example – point out our current page is static, no link to content Selected work allows us to link to content both in DigitalCommons as well as to resources for which we have subscriptions; if not available in repository can link to content you purchase [fix this] Faculty to maintain their pages 1/13/2008

Link from this page takes directly to pdf found in Digital Commons 1/13/2008

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Cover page from article in DigitalCommons Cover sheet from article in DigitalCommons Article appears in Review of Higher Education, allows deposit of articles in institutional repositories 1/13/2008

Issues/challenges/opportunities Learning curve Metadata guidelines Copyright Customization/branding of main page Transition from ProQuest to bepress Advisory board 1/13/2008

The Future Content Integration with other digital collections Interface for Selected Works main page and link with Digital Commons More faculty publications Copyright – better integration of Creative Commons Licenses Creative Use – Development; grants management using journal feature More fully integrating these resources into our catalogs, our website, our portal, to better serve students and faculty To also better integrate the collections that many of our consortium partners have (CLIC, Oberlin group – St. John’s East Asian art Changing technology. This is not the final product. But we’re happy with both Digital Commons We also had a recent conversation with our Advancement office about a new creative use 1/13/2008

Journal as means of managing grant versions 1/13/2008

Just one example of one of the features – view revisions 1/13/2008

Conclusion In less than three years we have 85 student honor projects 3 faculty articles – open access 3 student peer-reviewed open access journals (59 total articles) Integration into existing workflow (no new staff) The start of a sustainable program for campus publications Oral history transcripts coming soon New platform for faculty research and publications Please keep in mind, without adding staff, we have been able to make what we consider fairly good progress. We haven’t done a lot of focused marketing, because we wanted to start small Integrate into existing workflow And learn 1/13/2008

Additional information Contacts: Janet Sietmann (sietmann@macalester.edu) – Project Manager; Reserve Supervisor Terri Fishel (fishel@macalester.edu) – Library Director Digitalcommons.macalester.edu SelectedWorks – works.bepress.com Janet is currently on west coast talking about our development earlier this week – some of your staff may have heard her speak at NITLE 1/13/2008

This presentation is licensed under the Creative Commons license for non-commercial educational reuse and adaptation under a CC Attribution /Non-commercial / Share-Alike license 1/13/2008