3 Labor and the Library Repository
Who is Involved with Library Repositories?
Most IRs are coordinated or administered through the university’s library, though some are managed by a Research Office, Academic Affairs Office, or Graduate School. Libraries, by nature of their experience managing informational resources and the scholarly publication process—scholarly journals, database subscriptions, and the like—have taken the lead in coordinating the establishment, structure, implementation, and maintenance of repositories.
Various people with in the library may be interact with the activities of the repository in many different ways.
Some examples of people that might be involved with the IR :
- Scholarly Communication Librarians
- Institutional Repository manager
- Subject /Liaison Librarians
- Technical Support staff
- Digital initiatives or publishing Services staff
- Copyright Services
- Data Management staff / librarians
- Digital Humanities staff
- Open Educational Resources (OER) Librarian
Sometimes a library may have one or more people in these roles, dependent upon its size, amount of scholarly output, and commitment to archiving the institutions scholarly output.
In some cases one person in the library may take on many roles related to the IR, or just a few roles dependent on how the IR intersects with their main work responsibilities.
What kind of activities happen around Library Repositories?
There are many types of activities that may occur around the library IR. Types of social activities may include promoting the repository, education and or advocacy around the types of content, open access policies, rights permissions, compliance checking, user training and a liaising with a wide range of institutional departments, administration and/or external contacts. Types of technical activities may include repository implementation, customization and management of repository software, management of metadata and quality, creating usage reports and tracing and the preservation issues (Beamer, 2021).
Below is what a day in the life of a librarian who is an Institutional Repository Manager might look like.
A “Day in the Life” of an Institutional Repository Manager:
- Manage the daily operations of the digital repository at the Library.
- Read the newest article on Open Access research agreements and permissions.
- Create outreach and marketing for Open Access Week.
- Work with the repository, directing content strategies and policies for repository content, managing the ingest and curation of content, developing appropriate workflows and schema for ingesting and maintaining data and digital materials, and coordinating training, and supervising the work of other repository staff on the use and workflows of the digital repositories.
- Develop and implement procedures, workflows, and other necessary documentation for the institutional repository, in consultation with colleagues within Library.
- Consult with faculty and researchers in relevant programs throughout the campus community to promote the retention and accessibility of research output.
- Promote the repository to the campus community and solicits content from university stakeholders.
- Locate a library IR listed in chapter 1 of this resource. What people do you see that are listed above?
- What are the kinds of activities they perform that intersect with the IR?
References:
Beamer, J. E. (2021). Examining Open Access Information Infrastructures: A Sociotechnical Exploration of Institutional Repository Models in Japan and the United States (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai’i at Manoa).
