Understanding Faculty to Improve Content Recruitment for Institutional Repositories

"With the generous funding of a 2003 Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Leadership grant, the University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries endeavored to explore the apparent misalignment between the benefits and services of an IR with the actual needs and desires of faculty. Specifically, the grant sought to understand the current work practices of faculty in different disciplines in order to see how an IR might naturally support existing ways of work. This yearlong research has revealed some of the reasons why current IR systems are more useful to faculty in theory than in practice and has resulted in modifications to the University of Rochester's implementation of the DSpace code [7] to better align the repository with the existing work practices of faculty. Moreover, the findings have caused a complete rethinking of how we should explain and promote our IR."