D-Lib article about Cornell's Institutional Repository

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Worth a detour:

<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march07/davis/03davis.html>

D-Lib Magazine
March/April 2007
Volume 13 Number 3/4

ISSN 1082-9873
Institutional Repositories
Evaluating the Reasons for Non-use of Cornell University's Installation of
DSpace, by

Philip M. Davis
Cornell University
<pmd8@cornell.edu> (corresponding author)

Matthew J. L. Connolly
Cornell University
<mjc12@cornell.edu>

Abstract

Problem: While there has been considerable attention dedicated to the
development and implementation of institutional repositories, there has
been little done to evaluate them, especially with regards to faculty
participation.

Purpose: This article reports on a three-part evaluative study of 
institutional repositories. We describe the contents and 
participation in Cornell's DSpace and compare these results with 
seven university DSpace installations. Through in-depth 
interviews with eleven faculty members in the sciences, social 
sciences and humanities, we explore their attitudes, motivations, 
and behaviors for non-participation in institutional 
repositories.

Results: Cornell's DSpace is largely underpopulated and underused 
by its faculty. Many of its collections are empty, and most 
collections contain few items. Those collections that experience 
steady growth are collections in which the university has made an 
administrative investment, such are requiring deposits of theses 
and dissertations into DSpace. Cornell faculty have little 
knowledge of and little motivation to use DSpace. Many faculty 
use alternatives to institutional repositories, such as their 
personal Web pages and disciplinary repositories, which are 
perceived to have higher community salience than one's affiliate 
institution. Faculty gave many reasons for not using 
repositories: redundancy with other modes of disseminating 
information, the learning curve, confusion with copyright, fear 
of plagiarism and having one's work scooped, associating one's 
work with inconsistent quality, and concerns about whether 
posting a manuscript constitutes "publishing".

Conclusion: While some librarians perceive a crisis in scholarly 
communication as a crisis in access to the literature, Cornell 
faculty perceive this essentially as a non-issue. Each discipline 
has a normative culture, largely defined by their reward system 
and traditions. If the goal of institutional repositories is to 
capture and preserve the scholarship of one's faculty, 
institutional repositories will need to address this cultural 
diversity.

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