Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

10-8-2024

Keywords

Institutional repository; Open access; Digital collection management

Abstract

Crazy, but that’s how it goes! The University of Arkansas’ organizational structure for the institutional repository and other publishing ventures underwent significant changes with the creation of a new department in July 2023, the resignation of the IR coordinator who had been the sole developer of the IR since its inception, the move of IR supervision to the department head in January 2024, and the hiring of a new IR coordinator in July 2024. We realized with the resignation of our coordinator that policy decisions, changes in template assignments, assigning metadata, and even the use of external forms and software were often not documented. If they were documented, the documentation was housed in over 1000 files in five different servers. How do you start making decisions on future priorities and codify practices with little knowledge of the work that had already been accomplished?

This presentation will describe the paths we have taken to get back on the rails through data analysis, surveys, and living through the trials and errors of starting in the middle of a large project. Attendees will learn about the pain points of restarting an IR “from scratch” and will also gain insights in management practices that might allow their IR trains to keep running on the tracks after they have moved on.

Comments

Presented at the Digital Commons International Conference 2024, held at UC Berkeley.

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