1. Marilyn Billings Scholarly Communication Librarian
To Host or Not to Host or Decisions Along the Way to a Successful Hosted Repository Solution
Marilyn Billings
Scholarly Communication Librarian

2. Background Info Flagship of 5 campus UMass System
Students – 26,360; includes 5,820 grad students
Faculty – 1,180
Academic environment
87 bachelor’s degree programs, 6 associate’s, 73 master’s and 53 doctoral programs
Research
Over $140 million / year

3. Sabbatical Research (2005)
Clifford Lynch’s definition
“a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members”
ARL Bimonthly Report 226 (February 2003)

4. Why Do This? Define purpose and potential:
Critical component of changing scholarly communication system
Academic digital scholarship
Indicators of high quality
Increases visibility, status, and public value

5. Benefits of going forward
Many value-added services:
Links between IR content and publications
Excellent discovery tools; harvesting of research
Enhance scholarly publishing
Wide range of scholarly materials

6. More Cool Things Content defined by institution
Openly accessible and reusable
Digital content in lots of formats
Community focus
Personalization of faculty pages

7. But Wait! Many Challenges
Traditional library services
Current budget woes
Staffing and technical support
Why the library anyway?
What about content recruitment?
Then …
Business models
Legal issues
Marketing and administration

8. Advantages for Library
Stewards of scholarship
Collection development expertise
Liaison engagement with faculty
Information organizers (metadata)
Care about long-term preservation
Complementarity with electronic resource work

9. Lessons Learned From Others
Communications (content recruitment)
– start early
– work with librarians
– educate faculty
Guidelines
Planning
Use materials already developed

10. Communications – Start early
Scholarly Communication conversations
Early phase,
Campus Colloquium events
Faculty Senate presentations
Scholarly Communication crisis
Effect on Library budget
2001: Jean-Claude Guedon (Professor, University of Montreal and active in Internet Society), David E. Shulenburger (Provost, University of Kansas), and Heather Joseph (BioOne)
2004: “Freedom of Speech & Speech for Free”, keynote speaker Peter Givler, Exec Director, AAUP
2005: “In the Public Interest: Expanding Access to Scholarly Research”, keynote speaker, John Willinsky, PI of the Public Knowledge Project
2005: “University E-Repositories: Solutions for the Scholarly Community”; keynote speakers: Ann Wolpert, MIT, and Nancy Fried Foster, University of Rochester.
Faculty Senate presentations: Annual Library updates
Switching of gears – crisis in journal prices and library budget
cancellation of many journals

11. Communications – Work with Librarians
ScholarWorks Team
ScholarWorks Development Committee
Librarian Liaisons
New Partnerships

12. Communications – Educate Faculty
Research Library Council
Faculty survey, Spring 06
Faculty Senate actions
"Research and Publication in the Digital Age" Panel discussion, Feb 2006
Motion from RLC to support pilot IR, May 06
ScholarWorks
Pilot, July 06 – March 07
Grand launch

13. More on Faculty Survey Goals Results Survey
Get sense of faculty knowledge of an IR
Determine types of content they would contribute
Obtain names for the pilot project
Results
Some knowledge of and interest in participating
Content types: text, text, and more text; conference presentations; a bit of audio / video / images
Survey

14. Key points in Decision Pros of vendor hosted: Vendor support Hardware
Software
Storage
Development
Ease of use
Support for wide variety of content types
Librarians focus on “our thing”

15. More Key Points Cons to vendor hosted: Lack of control?
Dependence on vendor
Funding model?
Our content

23. Thank you
Contact info
Marilyn Billings
Scholarly Communication Librarian
University of Massachusetts Amherst