Institutional Repositories:
A Workshop on Creating an Infrastructure for Faculty-Library Partnerships

Co-sponsored by ARL, SPARC, and CNI

October 18, 2002
Washington, DC

SESSION I: THE OVERVIEW

Paula Kaufman, University Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Welcome
  
• Genesis of idea: ARL, SPARC, CNI
  
• Workshop is important not only for the information we'll gain and the ideas it will generate, but as a significant milestone in our determination to meet the challenges of the forces of the breath-taking changes and transitions we're experiencing in our colleges and universities
  
• We're experiencing enormous fundamental changes today. Change in:
  
  
  • Scholarly communications
    
  • Service models and methods
    
  • Expectations of our faculty and students
    
  • Economic and political factors ranging from the state of the economy to micromanagement by boards of trustees to political pressures to cut administrative fat and eliminate general waste
    
  • The competitive needs of our institutions to recruit and retain the very best possible faculty, students, and staff.
    
• We seem to be beset by a series of increases. Increases in:
  
  
  • The prices we pay for scholarly publications - in dollars, in diminished access, and in frustration and angst
    
  • The force of large merged and consolidated commercial entites in the marketplaces in which we're increasingly losing control
    
  • Demands for our services and resources
    
  • Attacks on our values of openness and protection of the common good
    
  • Demands for a way to make the digital raw data used as the bases of publications accessible perpetually
    
  • Demands for making what used to be kep in paper in file cabinets across campus perpetually accessible digitally through a central campus service.
    
• Will institutional repositories solve all these problems? Clearly not. But, they do appear to present us with a set of solutions for some of our most challenging problems.
  
• That's what we're here to explore today.
  
• Have an exciting program ahead of us. We'll look at why, how and how much, and explore the roles for faculty, librarians, and IT professionals, and look at some downstream opportunities.
  
• So, let's get started.