Writers Forum Open Access Project

In late October, 2015 I received notification that I was awarded a $1500 Harold Hacker Award Fund for the Advancement of Libraries. Here is the budget narrative:

The funding would be used to hire an intern for 300 hours @ $12.00/hr, who would first update the 2007 inventory to determine the current state of the collection. He or she would then build a showcase collection on Brockport’s open access institutional repository, Digital Commons@Brockport (http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/), and move 40 existing audio files currently behind a firewall in iTunes, 22 existing video files found on SUNY’s DSpace platform, and 18 existing digital files that are stored on local hard drives to this site. Metadata would be added to enhance the discoverability of the collection, and the catalog records would be created or updated, and links would be updated on the departmental and library webpages. Historical posters, programs and other archival material would be scanned to round out the collection.

While I asked for $3600, I received less than half of that. Since the premiere goal was to create an online, open access collection that is what I will have to focus on. 

 

Social media experiences

The Peter Singer story:

I’m guessing you know who Peter Singer is, having taught philosophy, so I’ll jump right in with the story. Late this summer, we received a request from a publisher to reprint an article (by Peter Singer) that appeared in the 1974 edition of the Philosophic Exchange. This is the first time that we’ve received such a request when it wasn’t on behalf of the author of the article. In those cases, it’s an automatic yes. In this case, I searched out Dr. Singer, who was still active and teaching at Princeton, and sent him an email explaining the situation and telling him that (although we held the copyright), we were passing this request on to him. Whatever remuneration there was, should go to him, as well as the decision as to whether he wanted his work to appear in this forthcoming publication. I quickly received a nice note back thanking me, and saying he would respond to the request. Then, last week, that same paper came up as our Featured Paper of the Day, and I tweeted it, and sent him my congratulations PotD email. He immediately responded, and tweeted it himself. Almost instantaneously there was a flurry of activity on the website, and people all over the world started downloading this article. We had more than 300 downloads of that article in the next few hours. It was fascinating to watch those pins drop.

Establishing the alumni connection:

This next story is chronicled below. When this month’s Activity Updates came out, I identified 5 or 6 people, whose works were in part responsible for areas in which the repository excelled in the previous month. Several were from the Education department. For each of those, I sent a little congratulatory email (as seen below) to the author, and copied their advisor in, as well. Finally, I sent a summary on to Janka, the department chair. I was pleased to see that Frank, one of the advisors, followed up with his own email to the student. I think that one will mean more to Karen, than anything I could send, and it represents to me another way that Digital Commons can help build and maintain connections with Brockport’s alumni.

All this being said, I know I don’t do nearly the amount of marketing or work in social media that I did in the early days of the IR, but experiences like these convince me that the time is worth the effort!

Correspondence with Geneseo re: repository policies

Being Brockport, we didn’t really have a lot of policies in place when we started the IR. So my answers will be a combination of policy and practice.

On whether submission is mandatory:

Our first thesis collection was the Environmental Science and Biology collection, which came out of a discussion with a professor, who was also chair of the graduate committee at the time. They started requiring their students to submit to them their thesis on CD, along with their print copies to be bound. The Education department came along next, and they were open to the idea of actually having the students submit their thesis to Digital Commons, and the advisor would do a final approval and it would be published. About a year into the repository initiative, the Graduate School submitted a proposal to the College Senate asking for it to be mandatory that theses that would normally be submitted to the library for binding, be submitted digitally to the IR. The department could still bind, if they wished but the IR was the primary depository. Has that been adhered to? Marginally. It continues to be an educational process, but I believe the 3 biggest departments comply.

On how we receive permission:

Our thesis collection is two pronged – retrospective and born-digital. The born-digital collection has a click through agreement that the student checks before they submit their thesis. Here is a link to the instruction guide (found in the sidebar of each collection) http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/ehd_theses/submission_guide.pdf that we provide each department. It works the student through the process step by step, and shows a piece of the permission agreement. For our retrospective theses, we digitize and try and find emails to ask permission to upload. This tends to be time consuming, and I admit that I have many more theses digitized than I am currently able to upload, so I have put a moratorium on doing any more at this point. We have a Thesis Digitization Policy, based on University of South Florida’s listed on our website http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/thesis_digitization_policy.pdf .

Creative work and other lessons learned:

As some of the original champions have retired or moved away, questions have arisen such as: we don’t want our students research published before we get a chance to publish (the sciences), or what about work that isn’t quite good enough to be in the IR, or what about if the student wants to publish in the future? So, just about a year ago, we started allowing embargos (one year automatic for EnvSci, and one year renewable for Bio). Some of the creative writers who gave permission have come back with individual requests (could I take this down – I think if Mrs. XXX read it, they might sue me for libel; I want to self-publish- it is allowed if it’s on the IR?) Those kinds of questions. I offer to provide a link in the metadata to their “published” book. English gives their graduates a choice of whether to submit or not, in fact, I’m not sure that they even tell them about it, to be honest.

Is it worth the time and effort?

I’m not sure which platform you are thinking about for your IR. We have been very happy with bepress and Digital Commons, but here’s my caveat: you will get out of it, what you are willing to put into it. If you look at the 5 IR’s in the http://suny.researchcommons.org/ , 3 of us started at about the same time. Only one of us has a full time IR manager and the difference in size of collections and number of downloads is noticeable. But, it depends on what your goals are for the IR. I consider Digital Commons a part of the Brockport marketing plan, and align my goals with the strategic goals of the college, and the strategic goals of the library.

I’m sorry, you ask a simple question, and I answer with an essay. Please let me know if there is anything else you need to know.

Kim

From: Allison Brown [mailto:browna@geneseo.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2015 12:17 PM
To: Myers, Kim
Subject: Question about Digital Commons

Hi Kim,

We were beginning a conversation about IRs with a faculty here at Geneseo, and I was wondering if I could ask some questions about your experiences with the digital repository at Brockport.

I noticed you have a fair amount of student theses and dissertations available through digital commons, and was wondering if you had any insight into how individual departments handle this. For example, is it mandatory, and do the students sign a release? 

We are also curious if any of the theses you host are creative writing, and if so, what were the discussions leading up to including these types of student work in the repository. Our faculty member is advocating to include all types of student work, but has heard some arguments against providing open access to unpublished student creative work, and I was curious whether this was a conversation you had at Brockport while setting up policies for Digital Commons. 

Any insight you have would be helpful!