Institutional Repository Investigative Task Force Meeting: February 14, 2018

Parkland College, Champaign

Members Present: Cheri Cameron, Parkland College; John Dorr, chair, Northwestern University; Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Illinois Wesleyan University; Jonathan Nabe, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (by phone); Ken Orenic, College of DuPage; Kyle Rimkus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Alexis Rogers, Lincoln Land Community College; Laurie Sauer, Knox College

Member Absent: Paul Blobaum, Governors State University

CARLI Staff Present: Elizabeth Clarage, Amy Maroso (by phone)

Decisions

• Ken Orenic will take minutes.
• January minutes were accepted.

Discussion

• General conversation about bepress
  • Discussed survey comments regarding bepress.  It was noted that all survey respondents were overall satisfied with bepress services.  
  • Respondents did raise concerns about how the sale to Elsevier could potentially impact services, costs, and policies.  
  • Respondent comments regarding the sale will be added to the final report.  
  • A “bepress Advisory Board” has been established.  Stephanie is serving on the board.  The board did not discuss the bepress sale or other issues regarding the business activities, but rather focused on the board being transparent, improving communication and user advocacy.  
  • It was noted that bepress users connect with other users and the company through user groups, such as the Great Lakes User Group and through an active online Google Group.  
• CARLI – bepress client
  • CARLI contracted with bepress for repository services.  As part of that agreement bepress set up “mini-bepress” sites for CARLI members.  These mini sites did not include all features that full bepress sites offer.  CARLI ended the contract due to budgetary issues.  
• Bepress Consortial IRs
  • In looking for examples of a bepress IR consortium, the Task Force identified reviewed the Galileo (University System of Georgia) bepress consortium site to determine if each institution maintains their own instance of Digital Commons.  Based on this review, it is apparent that each library has their own instance of Digital Commons.  
• Survey
  • IR Survey Responses.   Discussion took place regarding responses to several of the survey questions, including:
    • A review of the type of content statistics took place
  • Q. 12. Reasons for not implementing an IR
    • Funding and support staff were the two top reasons
  • Staff Support:  A discussion took place regarding survey respondents’ understanding of the answer choices “Lack of staff support” and “Lack of technical expertise.”    Task Force members questioned whether respondents considered if “lack of technical expertise” was a staff support issue.  
  • Interest in and anticipated use of a CARLI consortia IR
    • Reviewed responses.  (Note that averaging ranking – 1 is highest, 5 is lowest)
    • It was noted that few institutions expressed interested in using an IR to store research data as a means to meet government mandates for making federally funded research data available to the public.  
  • Q 9. Amount of content held in library IRs
    • Discussion regarding the amount of data in IRs.  These results might be useful for migration and in determining if use local or cloud storage solutions would be appropriate.  
  • Q. 17.  IR Features  
    • the 12 features – noted that from “Batch upload” up is the middle average.  
    • It was noted that respondents offered little nuance in answers given to the low, medium and high prioritization of features
    • Action Item:  Combine the Medium Priority into the high and low priority areas.  
    • Action Item:   At meeting John broke out responses based on Carnegie institution type for the 38 institutions that expressed interest in having an IR.
  • Q. 19.  Not consider IR consortial option
    • Response were open to all libraries, not just those that do not have an IR.  

Tasks Assigned

• Final Report Structure
  • Taskforce members volunteered to work on specific sections of the document to work on in anticipation of getting the draft ready for 2/28.
  • A Google Document titled “Draft of Preliminary Report” was created that was structured as follows:  
    • Executive Summary
    • Work of the task force Stephanie)
    • Options that may be emerging
    • History of Task Force (Ken O)
    • Definition of consortial - COMPLETE
    • Environmental Scan (Other consortial IRs, IRs in the state (including platforms) (John D)
    • Survey & results (Laurie)
    • Migration concerns (Kyle, Stephanie)
    • Options / further investigation (John, Kyle)
    • Appendix 1 - Survey results
    • Appendix 2 – CARLI institutions with IRs

Report deadline and next Task Force meeting date

A draft of the report will be discussed at the next Task Force meeting, to be held via telephone on Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Meeting adjourned 1:50 pm.