Reaching Out: Increasing Faculty Participation in Your IR

Institutional Repositories at teaching institutions often suffer from low faculty participation. We will share the findings from our 2022 article, “Faculty Awareness and Use of an Institutional Repository at a Masters-Granting University” published in JLSC, and the various outreach efforts that produced low levels of scholar participation. We will then turn to the primary focus of our session - an internal library partnership that has significantly increased the rate of deposit in FHSU Scholars Repository.

In 2021, Forsyth Library assumed responsibility from University Relations and Marketing for a Scholarly News initiative. Authors are invited to use a webform to submit information about their latest scholarly publications. The library, in turn, promotes those works through multiple channels on campus and online. The Scholarly Communication team saw this as an opportunity to engage scholars at the time of publication. Through a partnership with Outreach, information about these publications is shared with the Scholarly Communications team who analyze the submission for IR deposit eligibility. This has provided the team a direct line of engagement with a targeted group from which to solicit deposit. The partnership has resulted in increased deposit of current scholarship as well as subsequent deposits from participating authors.