Helping Faculty Embrace Fate: Collaborating to Build and Promote an IR and a Scholarly Communications Program on Campus

This presentation will share the experiences at one university that took a collaborative approach to building an institutional repository and creating a scholarly communication program on campus. All aspects of the collaboration and process will be discussed including successes, failures, roadblocks and campus-wide wins. Presenters will discuss on how the library leveraged their knowledge to solidify a relationship with the Office of Research, the Faculty Center, and other partners around campus to stimulate need and engage in conversations with faculty and administrators. This was all accomplished with no set position dedicated to these needs, and one reference and instruction librarian and a manager in the office of proposal development leading the charge. They were able to use and build relationships with faculty to successfully raise awareness about scholarly communication issues and implement some changes. A direct consequence of engaging with different groups on campus and establishing support on campus has been the growth of the institutional repository from an unknown to a recognized option on campus for making faculty scholarship openly accessible and visible online. Presenters will discuss techniques used to learn about faculty needs, make campus connections, highlight successful partnerships and prepare for the next steps. The presentation will also focus on how cultivating partnerships across campus benefits the library, IR, other departments, and scholarly communication program. Finally there will also be a spotlight on future steps, provided by the newly appointed scholarly communications librarian