Fostering Connections: Creating an IR Managers Forum

Sometimes it’s difficult to find answers for work related questions. This can be compounded when one lacks the means to engage with a community of peers who face similar situations and problems. As institutional repository managers, we found ourselves in this situation: with access to resources and listservs that didn’t quite fit our needs. Available resources were either a) too general in scope, drowning out a discussion of repository-specific concerns, b) too narrowly focused on platform specific issues or c) too technically oriented toward the details of software functionality and setup. Instead of remaining siloed, or reaching out to a few individuals in our network, we decided to engage our colleagues by creating a discussion space for institutional repository managers. The IR Manager Forum is designed to foster information sharing among institutional repository managers, regardless of software platform, institutional setting, or technical expertise. It uses Google Groups as a platform. Members can post and view threaded messages. Messages are accessible through the website, and members can also receive and respond to posts by email. These conversations have the potential to help individual managers develop their repository policies, outreach, workflows, and best practices. They can also aid in cross-platform comparisons to identify software features and limitations, larger trends in institutional repositories, areas for improvement, and future directions. Within the first 24 hours of launching the IR Managers Forum, we reached over 100 members from institutions across the US and Canada, and from Africa, Western Europe, and the Middle East. These members include staff and faculty, with various levels of supervision and administration of their IR. In this presentation, we’ll discuss the why and how of creating the IR Managers Forum, lessons learned along the way, as well as the outcomes we anticipate