Best Practices, Sustainability, and the Current State of Institutional Repositories
Chin, Olivia; Cope, Elizabeth; Dosch, Brianne; Cate, Ashley
- Publisher
- Zenodo
- Language
- en
Abstract
Institutional repositories are an established infrastructure for the preservation of research and other work. Despite this established infrastructure, there is a wide variety of platforms, personnel, and practices throughout institutions. Because of this, institutional repository managers face considerable challenges in determining best practices, day to day operations, and planning for the future. In 2024, the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries was preparing for the migration of their institutional repository to a new platform. This migration brought up several questions around best practices and the sustainability of institutional repositories. How do institutional repositories handle data, visual media, and other types of content? Who manages the institutional repositories, and how much time is devoted to this important work? Which standards do institutional repository managers rely on to inform their decisions? A group of librarians involved in the migration created a survey in 2025 to ask peer institutions about their best practices, sustainability, and general management of institutional repositories. Survey questions included topics such as campus and librarian perception of institutional repositories, and what specific practices lead to success (or failure) for institutional repositories overall. This presentation will give an overview of the survey questions and the initial results. Topics to be covered include accessibility, migration, platform differences, institutional repository personnel, and the general future of institutional repositories in academic libraries. Those who attend this presentation will leave with a renewed understanding of the current landscape of institutional repositories in academic libraries. Attendees will be given a chance to share their own experiences from their institutions. We hope that this presentation will inspire further conversation and research in the ever-evolving environment of institutional repositories.
Full text
Best Practices, Sustainability, and the Current State of Institutional Repositories Olivia Chin, Lizzie Cope, Brianne Dosch, & Ashley Cate University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries https://tiny.utk.edu/best_practices_ir
OLIVIA CHIN LIZZIE COPE BRIANNE DOSCH ASHLEY CATE ABOUT US Assessment Projects Librarian Scholarly Communication Librarian Head, Data and Digital Scholarship Publishing and Open Repository Administrator
Padlet https://tiny.utk.edu/IR Feel free to share your own experiences with IRs!
Background Results & Takeaways Looking Ahead Share Your Experience (Padlet) 03 01 02 04 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Background 01 Who, What, Where, When, & Why
THE STUDY What: Surveying to understand best practices for institutional repository management for long term sustainability. Why: Our own IR is migrating to a new platform! How: IRB approved survey of academic librarians in North America. When: Survey conducted Summer 2025.
Demographics ●Institution Size & Type Management of IRs ●Job Titles ●Percentage of time spent on IR ●Is IR mentioned in job description? SURVEY QUESTIONS Content ●Content ingested ●Content selection Standards ●Best practices followed ●Documentation ●Assessment Outlook ●The future of IRs
Results & Takeaways 02 Survey responses and analysis
—Open text response "Just like the past: ignored, reviled, undersupported"
Looking Ahead 03 The next steps of our study and beyond
Next steps for study: ●Finish data analysis ●Write paper summarizing the survey and results ●Share findings with library administration ●Submit paper for publication!
Next steps for our IR: ●Finish migration to new platform ●Meeting with stakeholders within library to define some of our best practices moving forward (ex: Who decides what goes in our IR?) ●Find ways to integrate our impending membership with Dryad (data repository with our IR) ●Continue to do outreach for the IR!
Share Your Experience! 04 Padlet: https://tiny.utk.edu/IR
Thank you! https://lib.utk.edu/ https://trace.tennessee.edu/ https://tiny.utk.edu/best_practices_ir Contact: [email protected]u [email protected]u [email protected] [email protected]u https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/10-fun-facts-about-smokey/51-184419735 Presentation slides from Slidesgo.
