Who is your repository?

For Open Access week we’re examining the role of the library in improving the impact and visibility of an institution’s research output. Guest blogger, Kimberly Chapman, Director of Campus Repository Services at the University of Arizona, discusses faculty relationships and their value in growing an institution’s repository.

The UA Campus Repository, the institutional repository for The University of Arizona (UA), celebrates its fifth year this month, having grown from a small starter collection of approximately 9,000 electronic theses and dissertations to a community of more than 49,000 items and multiple collections today.

While I’m often asked “What’s in your repository?” I think the more interesting question is “Who is your repository?”

The repository disseminates, showcases and preserves UA scholarship, including: open access copies of published articles and books; unpublished materials such as supplementary research data; undergraduate and graduate theses/dissertations; peer-reviewed journals; magazines and newsletters; conference proceedings; technical and research reports; bulletins; datasets; photos; presentations, and historical documents.

While I’m often asked “What’s in your repository?” I think the more interesting question is “Who is your repository?” Collaborating with our campus customers has been key to developing interest and promoting the repository across campus.

The repository is as much about building community as it is about building collections. Faculty, staff and departments partner with the library in developing collections and adding content that they wish to share, archive and preserve. Faculty that we collaborate with commit to making materials available open access and have a vested interest in the success of the repository.

Who is the UA Campus Repository?

The repository is our College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; the Honors College; the Graduate College; the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research; the College of Medicine; the Water Resources Research Center; Mexican American Studies; Linguistics faculty; and other departments, groups and individuals in our campus community.

The repository is as much about building community as it is about building collections.

The repository makes content available in a central location and ensures access and preservation. Its value lies in the content being readily discoverable by search engines and other access points, as compared to individual websites which have limited search capability and are not optimized for discoverability.

The delivery of statistical information on views and downloads is important to our campus collection managers. The integration with Altmetric and ORCID are timely and useful Open Repository enhancements that add value for authors as the Library builds out open access manuscript deposit, in collaboration with faculty, to support compliance with funder requirements.

The collaboration between faculty and the library has been essential to the growth of the repository, and we’re looking forward to the future developments with the UA Campus Repository.

 

 

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