If You Build It, Will They Come? Collateral Benefits of Changing Strategies to Facilitate Faculty Participation in a Campus IR

In October, 2014, the University at Albany Libraries launched Scholars Archive (SA), the University’s Institutional Repository (IR). Our first year of trial and error generated mixed results and low participation by non-library faculty. In year two, we redeveloped our strategy to yield benefits beyond simply increasing repository content. The new approach has three prongs: targeting outreach to deans, department heads and campus wide meetings instead of targeting to individual faculty members; second, we now provide a “full service” model for submitting content instead of merely mediating a “self-service” workflow model; third, we strategically highlight the IR platform’s available metrics to tell stories which vividly demonstrate the dissemination and impact of scholars’ work when it is open access. As campus constituencies learn about Scholars Archive, interest “snowballs,” and we succeed in progressively reaching ever more faculty members. Interest from graduate students is also growing. An emerging strategy is to garner buy-in from campus administration as our Interim Dean works to educate the Provost about the benefits of Scholars Archive for both faculty and the University at Albany as a whole. A collateral benefit of these efforts is a broadened faculty perception of the libraries’ institutional roles. Outreach for Scholars Archive serves to demonstrate the value of the University Libraries as a whole on campus. We are now viewed as partners in scholarly communications initiatives: library’s role as publisher, library as an open access solution, and library as a source of impact assessment