Fast flows the stream: tackling the workflow challenge with the University of Southampton Research Repository

Abstract

Setting up an institutional repository (IR) is just the beginning. The next challenge is to respond to evolving university needs while building on the repository’s core vision. Embedding a repository involves engaging with key processes and academically driven deadlines. We illustrate the ramping up and enhancement of workflows, in 2006, to respond to the initial UK research assessment commitments at the University of Southampton. This task included training and managing a growing team for metadata validation and enhancement, creating new tools to manage a large input buffer and negotiating a variety of practical input processes to tight deadlines. It required a sensitivity to current practices in diverse departments. The great benefits were a closer interaction with all the disciplines and a recognition of key library contributions to a complex process. The School of Humanities required a more specific effort with its
more varied metadata and research outputs.

A core library team - working with Computing Services, EPrints Services in Electronics and Computer Science, administration and the academic schools - provided a coherent focus on the target. Each school is now represented in the IR and, as the workflow calms down, the concentration is now on how to build on these relationships using the library liaison team and evolving procedures to maintain the momentum towards achieving the best representation of the university’s output. There can now be a renewed emphasis on opening up access to text, images and audio and facilitating the repurposing of bibliographic information for personal services.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Wendy White: orcid.org/0000-0002-4509-5600

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