[Dspace-general] excellent article on populating IRs

[Rea Devakos]

Hi everyone

Apologies for the cross posting, but I wanted to alert you to an 
excellent article in the current D-Lib:

Understanding Faculty to Improve Content Recruitment for Institutional 
Repositories <dlib/january05/foster/01foster.html>
by Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons, University of Rochester

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january05/foster/01foster.html

Here's an excerpt:

Rather than approach faculty with a set, one-size-fits-all promotional 
spiel, these library liaisons operate under the guidance that a 
personalized, tailored approach works best. As we learned from the 
work-practice study, what faculty members care most about is their 
research. Expressing interest in their research, for example by reading 
a recent article by the faculty member prior to the meeting and then 
asking a couple of questions about the work, will get their attention 
and will usually stimulate a very enthusiastic conversation. Throughout 
the conversation, the library liaison is listening for opportunities to 
demonstrate how the benefits of the IR respond directly to the faculty 
member's web-related research needs. For example, when the faculty 
member relates frustration over a broken website link, the library 
liaison can explain that each document in the IR has a unique and stable 
URL.

By contrast to the language previously used to describe the features and 
benefits of the IR, we are now describing the IR in language drawn from 
faculty interviews. Thus, we tell faculty that the IR will enable them 
to...

    * Make their own work easily accessible to others on the web through
      Google searches and searches within the IR itself
    * Preserve digital items far into the future, safe from loss or damage
    * Give out links to their work so that they do not have to spend
      time finding files and sending them out as email attachments
    * Maintain ownership of their own work and control who sees it
    * Not have to maintain a server
    * Not have to do anything complicated

Rea

-- 
Rea Devakos
T-Space Service Co-ordinator
Information Technology Services
University of Toronto Libraries
7th floor, Robarts Library
130 St. George St
Toronto, ON
Canada M5S 1A5
E: rea.devakos at utoronto.ca
V: 416-946-0113
F: 416-978-1668
http://tspace.library.utoronto.ca


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