1. Creative Partnerships: Dynamic IT and Library Collaboration to Promote Faculty Research, Profiles, and Enhanced Workflow
Presenter: Lisa A. Macklin Presenter: Mary Walters
Presenter: Tim Morris

2. What we’ll cover
About Us The Emory FIRST Project Overview Operational System Project Timelines and Milestons Results Lessons Learned Next Steps References
We will highlight the successes and lessons learned during the Emory FIRST project, specifically the integration at Emory University of our open access repository with a new faculty profiling system.  Our goal is to promote faculty research and scholarship by providing full-text articles in the context of content-rich faculty profiles. In addition, the implementation provides an enhanced workflow for the faculty where submissions to the repository are integrated into the annual faculty activity reporting. We anticipate this change will improve overall faculty participation and submission rates to the repository.  The open access repository is also staged to allow for the integration of additional content types beyond articles to allow to encourage richer discovery of the intellectual output of Emory.

3. About Us

4. About Us Emory University
Private school founded in 1836 with nine schools:
Oxford College, Emory College, Graduate School, School of Business, School of Law, School of Nursing, School of Public Health, School of Theology
Emory University was founded in 1836 and is composed of nine schools:  Emory College, Oxford College, School of Business, Graduate School, School of Law, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Public Health, and the School of Theology. While guided by central administration, the schools are able to exercise a good deal of autonomy in defining academic policies, managing budgets, and guiding their faculty, creating what is sometimes called a ‘multiversity.’
While guided by central administration, the schools are able to exercise a great deal of autonomy in defining academic policies, managing budgets, and guiding their faculty creating what is sometimes called a “multiversity.”

5. About Us Emory University
Vision statement that expresses commitment to engagement and collaboration:
A destination university internationally recognized as an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged, and diverse community, whose members work collaboratively for positive transformation in the world through courageous leadership in teaching, research, scholarship, health care, and social action.

6. About Us Formation of LITS in 2013 Emory Libraries
Information Technology Services
LITS: Library and Information Technology Services
Library & Information Technology Services (LITS) was formed in 2013 with the goal of better aligning various service functions across the Emory enterprise, including IT functions. The LITS organization is the merger of a service unit with an academic unit, providing the opportunity to evaluate the potential of IT becoming an enabler of strategic change.

7. Emory FIRST Project
Emory FIRST (Faculty Information on Research, Service and Teaching)
Capture faculty information in a central system
Provide path for faculty to deposit in institutional repository (IR)
Selected faculty information and IR content publicly available to promote faculty and their work
Emory FIRST is a source for Faculty Information on Research, Service, and Teaching. The solution includes capturing faculty information within a central system, providing a path for faculty to deposit their scholarly content in a repository, and making selected faculty information and their deposited scholarly content publicly available to promote faculty and their work.

8. Emory FIRST Project Emory FIRST Strategic Goals
Establish an authoritative source of faculty profile and activities data
Promote researchers through information rich profiles and web pages
Enhance discovery by creating links between profiles and content
Create mechanisms to measure impact of research and scholarship
Emory FIRST is the first place to discover more about the great work of faculty at Emory. It is designed to provide a platform to better manage and promote scholarly activities and profiles, as well as link to the institutional repository for faculty-authored content. Publications, grants, professional activities, teaching, and areas of research are all elements maintained within a single system and available for reuse to create CVs, biosketches, and web profiles. In addition, there are opportunities for extending this information to create enhanced networks for collaboration, impact reporting, and new ways of discovery.

9. Emory FIRST Project Emory FIRST consists of multiple systems
Collect Research Objects and Linkages
Repository
Storing Faculty authored Content
Faculty Profiles
Share Knowledge, Display, and Impact
The overall solution consists of implementing multiple systems, including Symplectic Elements as a central knowledge base integrated with the institution’s open access repository, OpenEmory, and with VIVO to promote the work of faculty.
Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Research

10. Views of Emory FIRST

11. Emory FIRST Operational View
Submission into OpenEmory is now part of the annual faculty reporting for self-deposit in addition to mediated deposit by the staff in Scholarly Communications.

12. Emory FIRST System View

13. Emory FIRST Timelines & Projects
1/ Symplectic Elements Implementation Begins
7/ VIVO Alpha Connector
10/ Symplectic Elements ready for general release for School of Medicine
-- OpenEmory integration complete
-- All Schools using publications element

14. Emory FIRST Results

15. Emory FIRST Results Lessons Learned
Data Stewardship and Data Quality Issues
Extend Time with New Development from Vendor
Plan the Implementation in Phases
Engagement of the Library Enhances Academic Credibility
Manage Technical Debt
1. Data Stewardship and Data Quality Issues
Develop and engage data stewards early in the planning of the project. As we began our implementation, we discovered significant challenges around our HR and grants information and realized it would have been helpful to begin with our data stewards. We continue to resolve data quality issues, which has benefits beyond this project.
2. Extend Time with New Development from Vendor
While our vendor had existing repository connectors for DSpace and EPrints, we were one of the first clients for which they developed a general connector for a Fedora repository.
 3. Plan the Implementation in Phases
The initial commitment included a full system, including Publications, Grants, Professional Activities and the ability to generate a CV. An iterative implementation plan, beginning with only Publications, helps manage expectations and allows for discovery of faculty scholarship.
 4. Engagement of the Library Enhances Academic Credibility
While the library was engaged initially in the system configuration, their limited involvement in subsequent stages proved challenging. The full engagement of the library, in their role as representatives of the faculty, became a critical success factor As one dean described the nature of their involvement, “If the librarians aren’t happy, then the faculty aren’t happy.”
5. Manage Technical Debt
During early stages of the implementation, Emory made a choice to implement new areas of the software that were later redesigned, requiring a series of extensive data re-mappings in order to align with delivered functionality.

16. Emory FIRST Results Next Steps
Beta release of Vivo for public discovery of profiles of faculty information
Connect Vivo profiles with content in OpenEmory
Create a Data Advisory Group
Now that Symplectic Elements is implemented, our next step is to evolve the VIVO alpha connector for a beta release which will enhance the integration and visibility of faculty and their scholarship in OpenEmory. As we look toward university-wide adoption, we plan to create a broader group of stakeholders to help manage the larger set of university interests and help prioritize features. Establishing a group of data stewards will help facilitate our understanding of the data and related issues.

17. Emory FIRST Results Next Steps
Data Advisory Group to facilitate understanding of data and related issues
Data Advisory Group
Person Data
Teaching
Grants
Professional Activities
Publications
Reporting and Analytics
As we look toward university-wide adoption, we plan to create a broader group of stakeholders to help manage the larger set of university interests and help prioritize features. Establishing a group of data stewards will help facilitate our understanding of the data and related issues. In addition, a common set of activities and standards needs to be created by doing an analysis across the various schools.

18. References
Spencer, Eugene L, Metz, Terrance J, and Ferguson, Chris D. “Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Integrated IT/Library Organization.” EDUCAUSE Review 1 Jan. 2004; 31 July 2014,

19. Contact Us
Thanks for your interest in our poster Creative Partnerships. If you have questions, feel free to contact us at:
Lisa Macklin at or
Mary Walters at or
Tim Morris at or