exercising creativity to implement an institutional repository with limited resources
DESCRIPTION
The College of New Jersey Library had intended to implement an institutional repository since 2008. Many options were approached to secure resources for the new digital repository initiative but to no avail. It was not until early 2011 that we had a long awaited breakthrough when a team of three faculty librarians received a MUSE (Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience) grant to implement a pilot IR for the open access initiative to take off. The College MUSE program is established to promote and support campus-wide faculty-student scholarly and creative collaborative activity. This was the first library MUSE project. Two students majoring in Computer Science were recruited to help install IR + (recently developed and released as open source by University of Rochester) and customize the codes to enhance local access and data entry. This presentation will describe the implementation process, how our students collaboratively working with the IR+ software developer to add new features for data migration as well as lesson learned. Planning and actions taken to sustain the initiative including digital rights management and outreach within and outside the campus academic community will also be described. Presenters: Cathy Weng and Yuji Tosaka, The College of New JerseyTRANSCRIPT
Yuji TosakaCathy Weng
The College of New Jersey
June 9, 2012
NASIG Annual Conference, Nashville, TN
Exercising Creativity to Implement an
Institutional Repository
with Limited Resources
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Presenters
Yuji TosakaCataloging/Metadata LibrarianThe College of New Jersey Library
Cathy WengHead of CatalogingThe College of New Jersey Library
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Presentation Outline
IRs and IRs at smaller academic institutions – Context and problems
IR efforts at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ)
MUSE project – TCNJ IR pilot development
Life after MUSE
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The College and the Library
The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) State college, located in Ewing, NJ Seven schools, primarily
undergraduate programs Approximately 6,000 undergraduate
students Faculty and undergraduate research
strongly encouraged and supported TCNJ Library
Collection size: over 600,000 volumes
Few digital library collections *Images taken from TCNJ web site, May 3, 2011.
Context and problems
IRs and IRs at smaller academic institutions
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IR Context and Problems6
IR needs and benefits at academic institutions
IR challenges at smaller institutions IR implementation options at smaller
institutions
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Institutional Repository
Digital library collection and service designed to manage, organize, and showcase the intellectual output of an academic community to a broader audience
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IR needs at academic institutions Take stewardship of the intellectual
output of the campus community Open access and dissemination of
faculty scholarship Showcase student research and
accomplishments: demonstrated academic/educational quality
Institutional advancement and accountability
IRs and Smaller Institutions9
“Sleeping beast of demand for institutional repositories (IRs) from master’s and baccalaureate institutions”
Librarians at these institutions “want to know about the IR experiences of master’s and baccalaureate institutions generally. They also want to learn about their peers’ experiences with IR costs, required technical expertise, funding the IR effort, whether the local learning community will contribute to and use the IR, and raising the issue of IRs with their institution’s central administration.”
Source: Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States (Council on Library and Information Resources, 2007), p. 74-75 [http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub140/pub140.pdf]
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IR Challenges at Smaller Institutions Limited resources
Funding Staffing Technical expertise/support
Need for a minimal cost approach to develop and maintain IRs
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IR implementation options at smaller institutions
Predominant choice: consortial repositories
Other options Outsourcing: vendor-hosted platform Independent repositories
*Jingfeng Xia and David B. Opperman. (2010). Current trends in institutional repositories for institutions offering master's and baccalaureate degrees. Serials Review 36, 10-18.
Melissa Nykanen. (2011). Institutional repositories at smaller institutions in the United States: Some current trends. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 23, 1-19.
IR efforts at TCNJ2
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TCNJ IR Developing Journey (bumpy road)
IR initiative began in Spring 2009 Assessed local resources
Conclusion: very limited – i.e. support of hardware and software, staffing, etc.
Decision made to move forward with existing staff and an open source system
Explored open source IR platforms DSpace, Greenstone, Fedora Progress made with RUcore (Rutgers
Community Repository, a Fedora based system) Other possibilities also explored to no avail
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Change of Strategy
Exercised beyond the box thinking Initial goal – a pilot IR Possibility of involving students helping
with developing an IR Utilizing campus resources Ultimate goal – a permanent and
sustainable library service TCNJ MUSE Program seemed a good fit
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TCNJ MUSE Program
MUSE – Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience
TCNJ Faculty-Student Scholarly and Creative Collaborative Activity
Eight weeks (June-July) of summer research program
Undergraduate students conduct research or engage in creative activity in mentored collaboration with TCNJ faculty
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TCNJ MUSE Program
Program funds research stipend (both students and faculty), student on-campus housing
Project grants competitive; reviewed and selected by Faculty-Student Collaboration Program Council
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Forming a Team for MUSE Project
Library faculty to handle Technical needs Content recruitment Metadata application Rights management Front / back ends IR platform ease of use
Computer Science major students To learn library repository system To learn system installation and server
administration To learn working in an open source community To help customize open source IR to meet local
needs
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Library MUSE IR Pilot Team
Three library faculty Emerging Technologies Librarian Head of Cataloging Cataloging/Metadata librarian
Two Computer Science major students Recruited with help from a Computer
Science faculty MUSE application package prepared and
submitted in February 2011
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Library MUSE Project
March 2011 – Library IR team successfully awarded MUSE grant ($9,795.00)
Significance: First ever Library MUSE Project Library’s participation in academic mentoring Recognition of library faculty as part of the
research community Acknowledging the importance of a campus
central repository
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MUSE General Schedule
June 6-July 29, 2011 (8 weeks) Weekly luncheons to learn academic
research Voluntary progress reports throughout MUSE symposium held in week 8
Oral and poster presentations of all MUSE projects
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Preparation
The team critically and carefully examined and evaluated open source IR platforms
IR+ selected for TCNJ adoption for its next-generation look and feel
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IR+
Developed by University of Rochester First production release: August 2009 Has promising features
Browse by author, publication, sponsor Faceted filtering Author’s workspace for collaboration and
self archiving Name authority control Researcher’s profile page
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IR+
Image taken from UR Research website, accessed, 5/24/2012.
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Image taken from UR Research website, accessed, 5/24/2012
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Faceted filtering search results
IR+
Image taken from UR Research website, accessed, 5/24/2012
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Project Process – General
Established initial contact and maintain close communication with IR+ developer and repository coordinator
Assessed system requirements for hardware – server space, server specifications, etc.
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Project Process – Technical part
Chose to have a physical server over virtual server Allowed students to learn server administration IR+ manual written for Windows server
Reviewed Installation manual System administration manual User manual
Learned to use the system As administrator As user As author
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Project Process – Content Building Outreached two departments: Library,
Department of Chemistry Obtained lists of publications authored or
co-authored by library and Chemistry faculty
Began to establish preliminary metadata application profile and create metadata
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Project Process – Copyright management
Sought advice for copyright management
Used SHERPA / Romeo as first place to check for instructions of posting articles on IR
Contacted publishers as needed for further clarification of copyright regulations
Established local profiles for individual publishers and journals
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Logistics of Working with Students MUSE Google site established for
communication and expectation Announcements Calendar Collaborating documents Daily report Suggested added features Related timelines
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MUSE IR+ site on Google
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MUSE IR+ site on Google
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Project Logistics
Students and library MUSE faculty met weekly to discuss project progress and assignments for the following week
Emerging Technologies librarian met with students almost daily and provided technical advice
Frequent informal discussions with students as needed
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Project Logistics
Students later joined IR+ community and received much needed guidance from the original software developer
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Project Outcomes
TCNJ pilot IR, TCNJ Digital Scholar, successfully implemented
Local enhancements made (e.g. more intuitive metadata creation process)
Over 70 records (articles, book chapters, ppt presentations, poster presentations) created
Most significantly: contributed to enhancement of IR+ version 2.1 general release To support batch import and export of
MARC 21 files
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Project Outcomes
Preliminary metadata application profile established
Preliminary rights management workflow established
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TCNJ Pilot IR
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Author’s Work Space
Work in progress – From a pilot to a sustainable service
Life after MUSE Program3
From a Pilot to a Sustainable Service42
Library administration support Library faculty support Policy/procedure development
Metadata Copyright and permissions
Future plan Collection development Campus outreach/buy-in
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Support from Library Administration and Faculty
Library Administration Dean obtained some funding from Academic Affairs
to hire a student worker for help with further IR development
Library Faculty IR demo, Q&A document for keeping the library
faculty informed Faculty expressed support for moving forward on IR
planning as a new library initiative Work in progress to develop an initial formal IR
proposal to the Dean with input and comment from the entire library faculty
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Metadata Application Profile
Continued to refine the local metadata documentation
Why? — metadata quality control mechanism Accuracy, completeness, consistency in
metadata creation Clear guidance for paraprofessionals and
student workers Revised profile worked well with a student
worker
Sample Metadata Application Profile
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Copyright and Permissions
Continued to develop a simple and intuitive yet organized workflow Existing tools used to record publisher
copyright notices: e-mails (58.2%), hard-copy printouts (47.8%), spreadsheets (41.8%)
*Ann Hanlon and Marisa Ramirez. (2011). Asking for permission: A survey of copyrights workflows for institutional repositories. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 11, 683-702.
TCNJ experiment with CORAL for copyright management
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CORAL
Centralized Online Resources Acquisitions and Licensing
Open-source ERMS, built by the University of Notre Dame library (2010– )
Adopted by TCNJ for use as ERMS Its functionality inspired IR team and is
being tested for IR copyright management
CORAL worked well with a student worker
Copyright Information on Excel
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What’s Next?
Collection development Major focus on student work: reflection of
the increasing emphasis on deep student learning and intensive faculty-student collaboration in scholarly and creative activity
Campus outreach/buy-in Need for multiple approaches to promote
the IR as a unique library service
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What’s Next?
Copyright and permissions management Experiment with CORAL for managing
author permissions If CORAL works, might suggest to IR+
developer to incorporate into IR+
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Conclusion
Minimum-cost, bottom-up approach to developing an IR with limited resources Think like a startup/entrepreneur Be flexible and try any approaches that
work Do not aim for one big rollout Quickly formulate a “good enough” plan
and implement Constantly review and adjust Never fear “failures”
