Launching and Growing the ScholarlyCommons @ Penn: Evolution, Revolution, or Devolution

Evolution

Revolution

Devolution

Where does Penn fall? Devolution – Why? Penn extremely decentralized Funding comes from a fee that is assessed to each school Library considered one of many core services Schools expect services from library in ways that may not be true in other universities

Where does Penn fall? Devolution School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) Bibliographers key Target departments that are high profile Wait for departments to come to us Only take on a new department if faculty and the dean are on board

Where does Penn fall? Devolution When departments come to us – we are incredibly pro-active Check copyright clearances and upload documents for faculty Work under assumption that faculty do not have time to do this work Individual training sessions with faculty and staff who want to learn more about the issues

Where does Penn fall? Devolution – Success? 4,161 documents from 73 collections 6,953 dissertations Total 11,114 total documents Approximately 33,000 downloads per month

Growing requires all 3 approaches Devolution Needs to continue Evolution Politics within some departments precludes the entire department approaching us Individual faculty, however, have shown great interest

Growing requires all 3 approaches Evolution Need to start talking to those departments which have not been as supportive In many cases the publication system as it currently exists works “Open Access” means un-peer reviewed vanity publishing

Growing requires all 3 approaches Revolution Necessary to reframe our arguments Faculty generally do not see benefits of open access to them Do see the opportunity of giving themselves higher profiles inside and outside Penn Do see benefits (depending on disciplines) of e-publication services

Growing requires all 3 approaches Revolution Do see benefits of including “non-traditional” materials in repository (lecture series, proceedings, etc.)

Evolving the Devolved Revolution What will the future IR look like? IRs are the backbone (back-end) of new scholarly communication system Backbones, however are not necessarily what is most compelling to faculty Seeing increased interest in SelectedWorks, e- publishing possibilities and “front-end” services

Evolving the Devolved Revolution What will the future IR look like? Though IRs may be an essential component of what we bring to faculty, they are not necessarily what we “sell” to faculty

Evolving the Devolved Revolution What do we “sell?” Getting your scholarship into Google Creating your own webpage (SelectedWorks) Creating pretty online journals Clearing copyright permissions Uploading articles for you

Evolving the Devolved Revolution Re-thinking the IR All of these services are “fringe” from most librarians’ perspectives To faculty they are incredibly important Re-think how we sell and how we think about IRs

Evolving the Devolved Revolution Re-thinking the IR At Penn we are trying to turn this framework around and make these services the “core” from the faculty perspective For the libraries (a secondary concern for faculty) the “core” is preservation and open access