*Apologies in advance for duplicate postings.*

ALCTS webinar: Re-engineering the institutional repository to engage users

Date: June 1, 2011

All webinars are one hour in length and begin at 11am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1pm Central, 2pm Eastern Time.

Description: All too many institutions jumped on the institutional repository bandwagon, only to find they had installed it… and no one came. So what do you do about a service/software product in which you’ve already invested time and effort (and committed hardware to), that your users couldn’t care less about? Do you invest more time and effort into marketing? Do you throw more and more person-hours into meetings with faculty, either in groups or one-on-one? Beg, borrow, plead, “we’ll do it all for you”? Or do you stop, and approach the problem in a different way, by trying to figure out how your users do their work, and what it is they really need and want (and why the current system doesn’t meet those needs).

This webinar will touch on the initial situation at the University of Rochester, explore the ethnographic methods we used to address that last question, and how we responded. We will delve into the issues of investment and effort (read: $$$) to break with the past and start again. For example, the migration process was no small task: we will be very forthcoming about this. We will also comment on what it takes to run an Open Source program (there is no free lunch, as we all know). Finally we will cover how our new repository has changed our interaction with faculty and graduate students, and expanded the role the library now plays in our faculty and graduate students’ everyday work practices.

We believe in laughing while you learn, so come prepared for a fun, informative session and lots of lively interaction!

Audience: Anyone with an interest in the topic can benefit from this session and is welcome to participate.

Presenters: Nathan Sarr is a senior software engineer at the University of Rochester. He is a graduate of the Software Engineering Program (2002) at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has worked on large scale payroll software and taught software engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the creator of the IR+ institutional repository software system and currently manages the IR+ software project.

Suzanne Bell got her MLS in a galaxy long ago and far away (actually the University of Buffalo), and has reinvented herself several times since. Since 1998, she has been the librarian for Economics and Data at the University of Rochester, and since 2003 has been the lead "Projects Coordinator" (a title she made up) for the University's institutional repository, UR Research. She also teaches a course entirely online for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is the author of The Librarian's Guide to Online Searching, 2nd ed.) In her life outside of work, she has been known to "sing choruses in public" with the Off-Monroe Players, Rochester's Gilbert & Sullivan Company.

This is the fourth in a series of four webinars about institutional repositories to be offered between January and June 2011. The webinars included in the IR series are:

January 26, 2011 - Copyright and Contracts: Moving Beyond Text in IRs
April 13, 2011 - Repository Metadata: Challenges of Interoperability
May 11, 2011 - Engaging Your Campus in Utilizing Institutional Repositories

June 1, 2011 - Re-engineering the Institutional Repository to Engage Users

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To Register, complete the online registration form at http://www.ala.org/ala/onlinelearning/reg/webinar.cfm for the session you would like to attend.

Fees for individual sessions:

Group Rates - ALCTS Members & Non-Members: $99

Individuals - ALCTS Members: $39; Non-Members: $49

Participants outside the United States may register at the ALCTS member rate. 

Pricing for IR Series: (All 4 webinars)
Group Rates - ALCTS Members & Non-Members: $346 (save $50)
Individuals - ALCTS Members: $120 (save $36); Non-Members: $160 (save $36)
Participants outside the United States may register at the ALCTS member rate. 

ALCTS webinars are recorded and registrants will receive a link to the recording shortly following the live event.

For questions about registration, contact ALA Registration by calling 1-800-545-2433 and press 5 or email registration@ala.org.

For all other questions or comments related to the webinars, contact Julie Reese, ALCTS Events Manager at 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5034 or jreese@ala.org.

Posted on behalf of the ALCTS Continuing Education Committee.