Abstract
In the fall of 2020, several initiatives were begun at the Rooney Library to facilitate and increase open access to local research and scholarship via its institutional repository. The need to provide greater access to local scholarly content was amplified by the pandemic since limited access to physical collections was limited further. To begin, the library migrated from a locally-hosted instance of the open source institutional repository platform DSpace to a hosted version of DSpace managed by an external vendor in order to realize the benefits of additional technical support, the ability to provide greater consistency, and customization. The result was a refreshed, rebranded institutional repository. As part of the migration, the institutional repository’s organization was transformed to comply with industry best practices. The metadata was reviewed and changed to achieve greater consistency. Once the transition was complete, a backlog of documents was added, increasing the amount of content nearly 60 percent. Moreover, the new institutional repository was marketed, and new content was solicited to include undergraduate and faculty scholarship, since the previous iteration of the repository focused exclusively on preserving master’s theses and projects. In addition to the institutional repository revamp, the library also applied for and received institutional grant funding to ingest additional content into the institutional repository. Approximately 450 graduate works previously available only in print format were digitized as part of this initiative. In sum, these efforts resulted in increased open access to more local scholarship. Note: Poster presentation at the 2022 Association of Christian Librarians Annual Conference, June 13-15, 2022.
