1 
A multifaceted aproach to promote a university repository: 
the University of Kansas? experience. 
 
 
Holly Mercer, Brian Rosenblum, Ada Emet 
 
Holly Mercer: 
University of Kansas Libraries 
hmercer@ku.edu  
Anschutz Library Room 320K 
1301 Hoch Auditoria Dr. 
Lawrence Kansas 66045 
 
Holly Mercer is the Coordinator of Digital Content Development at the University of 
Kansas. A member of the Digital Initiatives program since 2003, she is a consultant on 
metadata, digitization standards, project management, and scholarly communication 
isues for the KU campus, and administrator of the KU ScholarWorks repository. 
 
Brian Rosenblum: 
University of Kansas Libraries 
brianle@ku.edu  
Anschutz Library Room 320A 
1301 Hoch Auditoria Dr. 
Lawrence Kansas 66045 
 
Brian Rosenblum has served as Scholarly Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of 
Kansas since 2005, where he helps promote KU ScholarWorks and develop other digital 
projects. Previously, from 2000-2005, Brian worked at the Scholarly Publishing Ofice at 
the University of Michigan Library. His profesional interests include scholarly 
communication isues, electronic publishing, and library development in Central and 
Eastern Europe. 
 
Ada Emet: 
University of Kansas Libraries 
aemet@ku.edu 
Anschutz Library Room 300 
1301 Hoch Auditoria Dr. 
Lawrence Kansas 66045 
 
Ada Emet has worked at the University of Kansas since 2002. She serves as the 
subject specialist for chemistry and molecular biosciences and has been involved in 
projects to foster greater awarenes and use of KU?s institutional repository, KU 
ScholarWorks. She has been interested in the complex isues currently facing the system 
of disemination and aces of scholarship since graduate school. 
 
 
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Article Type: 
Case Study 
 
Purpose of this paper 
To describe the history of KU ScholarWorks, the University of Kansas? institutional 
repository, and the various strategies used to promote and populate it. 
 
Design/methodology/approach 
This paper describes how KU ScholarWorks came into being, and discusses the variety of 
activities employed to publicize the repository and encourage faculty to deposit their 
work. In addition, the paper discusses some of the concerns expresed by faculty 
members, and some of the obstacles encountered in geting them to use the repository. 
The paper concludes with some observations about KU?s eforts, an asesment of the 
succes of the program to date, and suggests some next steps the program ay take. 
 
Findings 
KU ScholarWorks has relied on a "self-archiving" model, which requires regular 
communication with faculty and long-term community building. Repository content 
continues to grow at a steady pace, but uptake among faculty has been slow. In the 
absence of mandates requiring faculty to deposit work, organizations running institutional 
repositories must continue to aggresively pursue a variety of strategies to promote 
repositories to faculty and encourage them to deposit their scholarship. 
 
Originality/value 
KU?s experience wil help other institutions develop institutional repositories by 
providing examples of marketing strategies, and by promoting a greater understanding of 
faculty behavior and concerns with regard to institutional repositories. 
 
 
 
A multifaceted aproach to populate a university repository: 
the University of Kansas? experience. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
In a September 2005 article asesing institutional repository deployment in the United 
States, Cliford Lynch and Joan Lippincott conclude that "institutional repositories are 
now clearly and broadly being recognized as esential infrastructure for scholarship in the 
digital world" and that they are "being positioned decisively as general-purpose 
infrastructure within the context of changing scholarly practice, within e-research and 
cyberinfrastructure, and in visions of the university in the digital age" (2005). However, 
although repositories may be "recognized as esential infrastructure" it is not necesarily 
faculty-authors doing the recognizing, and persuading faculty to fil institutional 
repositories (IRs) through self-archiving remains a chalenge. 
 
 
3 
The University of Kansas (KU) established its institutional repository, KU ScholarWorks, 
in spring 2003, early in the IR movement, with solid support from the Provost, who was 
instrumental in helping launch the repository as part of a broader scholarly 
communications program. Since its introduction, library staf have employed a variety of 
strategies and approaches, none of which are unique to KU, to marketing KU 
ScholarWorks to the KU community. However, despite active building and promotion 
for nearly thre years, making the campus aware of its existence and purpose has not 
ben easy, and uptake among faculty has been slow, though content has continued to 
steadily grow. 
 
KU?s experience is typical. A 2004 report on the state of institutional repositories aserts, 
?The biggest problem facing those seting up IRs is persuading faculty to 
use them. Outside a few disciplines (e.g. physics, computer science, and 
economics) there is litle tradition of preprints or working papers and 
apparently stil litle interest in self-archiving. Academics may be radical 
in their thought but they are conservative in their behavior, and there is a 
good deal of inertia in the curent publishing systems?.The data quoted in 
this report shows that take-up rates for IRs have to date been very patchy, 
especialy where the deposit of materials depends on the decision by 
individuals to self-archive their material? (Ware, 2004). 
 
?Archivangelist? Stevan Harnad states that encouragement to deposit items ?is not 
sufficient to raise the self-archiving rate appreciably above the 15% baseline for 
spontaneous self-archiving? (2006). He argues forcefully for institutions to require 
faculty to self-archive al research. In the absence of those mandates (and perhaps as a 
necesary preliminary to them) institutions operating IRs wil continue to employ a 
variety of smal- and large-scale, labor-intensive methods to reach out to faculty, solicit 
their material, and further engage them in applying alternative methods to diseminate 
their research. This can be "a slow, incremental, somewhat piecemeal proces" (Lynch 
and Lippincott, 2005) which has been compared elsewhere to throwing spagheti at a 
wal and seing what sticks (Salo, 2006). This kind of advocacy and gras-roots activism 
may be part of the preliminary groundwork needed to create an environment in which 
such mandates wil be possible. 
 
Jones, Andrew, and MacColl (2006) place these advocacy eforts in a theoretical 
framework that relates Everet Rogers? difusion of innovation concepts to isues of 
faculty adoption of IRs, the chalenges of geting widespread use of an innovation, and 
the time and eforts involved. They describe a social-system of repository use where 
innovators introduce IRs and advocacy builds support for IRs, but wholesale adoption 
does not occur until use is mandated. 
 
Succes for institutional repositories is usualy defined by the number of items held in 
relation to the number of faculty, and, though les often articulated, by how often the 
archived items are downloaded by others (use by authors and readers) (Shearer, 2003). 
Jones, Andrew, and MacColl compare an IR to a library and ask, ??who in their right 
mind would want to visit a library without books?? (2006). The more items deposited that 
 
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are representative of the faculty output the beter. But this definition of succes, if solely 
based on numbers, belies one purpose of IRs, which is to create opportunities for change 
in the system and its stakeholders, such as authors, publishers, and readers. In esence, 
universities are widely adopting institutional repositories as disemination engines 
because the succesful IR wil create an opportunity for behavior changes in both authors 
and readers, two key stakeholders in the system. 
 
Thus, gauging the succes of KU?s repository (and other repositories) is not simply a 
numbers game, especialy not at this early stage when IRs are stil largely in embryonic 
form. Although the number of items in KU ScholarWorks is modest, the repository has 
several very active communities and contributors, and has generated interest among 
faculty in a variety of departments on campus. Moreover, the early establishment of an 
institutional repository has given KU librarians a great deal of fedback and knowledge 
about the campus environment and faculty members? perceptions and needs with regard 
to scholarly communication. KU has gained valuable experience in the policy and 
technical requirements of seting up and maintaining a repository, and librarians have 
established relationships with academic units that wil likely prove beneficial in the long 
term as more faculty are persuaded to use KU ScholarWorks. 
 
This paper discusses the history of KU ScholarWorks to date, including the strategies 
used to populate it. Part One describes how KU ScholarWorks came into being, and 
discusses the variety of activities employed to publicize the repository and encourage 
faculty to deposit their work. Part Two explains how some KU ScholarWorks 
communities have evolved, and includes several observations and an asesment of KU 
eforts. The paper concludes with thoughts about measuring the ?succes? of KU?s 
repository, and suggests next steps for the program. 
 
PART ONE / BIRTH AND GROWTH OF KU SCHOLARWORKS 
 
Take in Figure 1: IR development at the University of Kansas 
THE KU ENVIRONMENT 
 
The University of Kansas (KU) is a comprehensive educational and research institution 
with over 29,000 students and 2,200 faculty members. KU includes the main campus in 
Lawrence; the Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas; the Edwards Campus in Overland 
Park; a clinical campus of the School of Medicine in Wichita; and educational and 
research facilities throughout the state. KU offers more than 170 fields of study and has a 
research budget of more than $274 milion. The KU ScholarWorks repository includes 
scholarship created primarily by faculty, staf, and students at the Lawrence and Edwards 
campuses. This repository service is ofered and maintained by KU Digital Initiatives, a 
program of Information Services (IS). The Vice Provost of Information Services overses 
the Libraries, Information Technology (IT), and Networking and Telecommunication 
Services divisions. Staf from both IT and the Libraries take part in providing technical 
and administrative support for KU ScholarWorks. 
 
5 
 
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK 
 
Discussion of scholarly communication isues on campus preceded the launch of KU 
ScholarWorks as a pilot project. David Shulenburger, an early advocate for scholarly 
communication reform, was Provost and Chief Operating Oficer at KU until June 2006. 
Shulenburger, an economist, proposed developing a national eprint archive, the National 
Electronic Article Repository (NEAR) (1998), and wrote and spoke on the topic 
extensively while KU Provost. He provided a campus forum for discussion of scholarly 
communication isues through the Provost's Seminar on Scholarly Communication, 
sponsored by the Ofice of the Provost and the University Libraries. Following on the 
heels of national eforts to manage the rising costs of library subscriptions to scholarly 
journals, such as the enumeration of the Tempe Principles for Emerging Systems of 
Scholarly Communication (Asociation of Research Libraries, 2000) and the formation 
of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the first 
Provost's Seminar, "From Crisis to Reform: Scholarly Communication and the Tempe 
Principles," was held on November 8, 2000. The primary focus of the seminar was 
engaging faculty in discussing the Tempe Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly 
Communication. Speakers addresed KU's role in the scholarly communication 
movement, reactions to the Tempe Principles, and discipline-based solutions to the serials 
crisis. While this seminar did not focus on establishing an institutional repository at KU, 
it laid the groundwork for development of a KU repository by raising awarenes of isues 
that a repository might help addres. 
 
LAUNCH OF A PILOT REPOSITORY 
 
Eforts to establish an institutional repository at the University of Kansas began in earnest 
in 2002 when the Libraries hosted a forum for KU librarians to discuss scholarly 
communication isues and the open aces movement. Provost Shulenburger focused on 
changing scholarly practices, and Information Services leadership focused on establishing 
a repository for preservation and disemination. A 2003 white paper explains,  
 
??scholarly works scatered across a variety of Web sites can be dificult 
for other researchers to locate. Opportunities for efective exchange may 
be lost in the chaotic sprawl of the World Wide Web?. Institutional 
repositories?digital collections that organize, preserve, and make 
accesible the intelectual output of a single institution?are emerging 
at leading universities as one response to this new environment? (Fyfe 
and Warner, 2003). 
 
Information Services leadership developed a repository implementation plan that caled 
for a series of working groups to addres various aspects of establishing and maintaining 
an institutional repository. These working groups were organized in the spring of 2003 
and each group was to complete its charges and submit a report by summer 2003. The 
 
6 
system selection group recommended instaling DSpace, then in beta test (version 1.0 
was released by the time KU was ready to proced with the instalation), and KU began 
with a "proof-of-concept" test repository to build further administrative and faculty 
support. In al, 28 staf members from the Library and IT units on the Lawrence and 
Medical Center campuses participated in the working groups. KU ScholarWorks 
launched as a pilot repository in September 2003. 
 
EARLY AND ONGOING FACULTY INVOLVEMENT 
 
KU ScholarWorks was conceived as a service for faculty, and KU Libraries sought 
ongoing faculty involvement from the earliest stages of planning and development. One 
of the IR working groups, the early adopters group, identified faculty from across KU 
who might learn to use the system, submit some items, and provide fedback to refine the 
IR. Some early adopters were faculty who had previously expresed an interest in digital 
scholarship. Richard Fyffe, Asociate Dean for Scholarly Communication and Holly 
Mercer, Coordinator for Digital Content Development, met with each early adopter at 
least once to demonstrate system functionality, discuss policies and procedures, and asist 
in uploading documents. The early adopters group submited items to the test repository, 
then met together in January 2004 for a focus group discussion on policy isues as wel as 
system functionality. Fedback received from these focus groups influenced subsequent 
decisions in the planning and development proces. Early adopters believed that KU 
ScholarWorks communities should reflect epistemic communities rather than 
administrative campus units (such as schools and departments). Therefore, KU 
ScholarWorks supports thre community types: formal communities, asociated with 
academic departments and research units; informal communities, for individuals to 
contribute without a formalized community structure; and communities of practice, for 
interdisciplinary groups that lack a formalized administrative structure. Interestingly, 
while early adopters stresed the need for communities of practice, none have been 
requested yet. 
 
While responses from the focus groups were generaly positive, few of the "early 
adopters" in fact became users of the repository. However, one early adopter did establish 
KU ScholarWorks' first formal community, the Policy Research Institute community, and 
several others became members of a KU ScholarWorks advisory commite. While KU 
ScholarWorks? policies are ultimately the decision of Information Services leadership, 
this advisory group brings an important faculty and user perspective to the planning 
proces. Staf working on repository development had hoped that members of the 
advisory commite would also act as "ambasadors" who would advocate the use of KU 
ScholarWorks to faculty peers, but to date the group has not yielded dramatic results in 
terms of advocacy or activism. In fact, few members of the commite are asociated with 
departments or research centers with KU ScholarWorks communities or have actualy 
submited items themselves. Future plans may cal for an expanded or altered 
membership so that actual KU ScholarWorks participants wil have a greater voice in 
developing and refining the service. 
 
 
7 
In addition, the KU Libraries held a separate focus group in conjunction with KU 
Continuing Education (KUCE) in February 2005 to learn more about principal 
investigators' needs for meting grant disemination requirements. The Libraries and 
KUCE invited recent federal grant recipients in various disciplines to participate. The 
participants stated that disemination of research was often only considered as an 
afterthought, because by the time there were results to report they had already moved on 
to the next project. They indicated an interest in having boilerplate language to describe 
how KU ScholarWorks mets preservation and disemination requirements for inclusion 
on grant applications. Consequently, KU Libraries added a section to the "About KU 
ScholarWorks" Web site titled "Support for Grant Applicants" which includes a link to 
text that grant applicants can copy and paste into their grant proposals 
(http:/ww2.ku.edu/~scholar/docs/grantsupport.shtml). 
 
ROMEO GREN (I) 
 
KU ScholarWorks launched with the expectation that faculty would self-archive their 
work?that is, they would decide to upload their work themselves or submit via a 
departmental proxy. However, it was clear there would be a number of bariers to 
imediate faculty participation, ranging from complex copyright clearance isues, to 
confusion about appropriate content for the repository, to simply geting the atention of 
busy faculty and researchers who may not pay much atention to a new service whose 
benefits are not imediately clear to them. Library staf believed that departments would 
be more likely to join as communities if faculty could se high quality content already in 
the repository, and therefore launched a project to populate KU ScholarWorks. 
 
KU Libraries launched the RoMEO Gren project in September 2004 to explore some of 
these isues. Phase one of RoMEO Gren (named after the RoMEO/SHERPA project 
from which much of the initial publisher policy data was derived) focused on alternative, 
staf-mediated strategies to populate the repository. By combining KU faculty citation 
data with ?gren? publisher policy data (publishers that alow their authors to post 
versions of their articles on web sites on in repositories), staf determined which papers 
by KU authors might be deposited in KU ScholarWorks. Staf then contacted those 
authors and asked permision to deposit the articles on their behalf. This initiative was 
based in part on a similar initiative undertaken at the University of Glasgow (Mackie, 
2004). 
 
The RoMEO Gren project goals were to add content to KU ScholarWorks, explore 
services that might be ofered faculty to support their use of KU ScholarWorks, and 
create interest in an institutional repository at KU. Staf identified and requested 2210 
articles from faculty. Ninety-two articles, about 4% of the total requested, were 
deposited. The percentage is low, but this was the first time many faculty had heard of 
KU ScholarWorks. It is also consistent with the compliance rate in the initial eight-month 
period after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented its Public Aces Policy 
requesting and encouraging (but not requiring) that NIH-funded investigators submit their 
 
8 
final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine?s PubMed Central 
Database upon aceptance for publication in a journal (Zerhouni, 2006). 
 
At KU, in addition to the 92 articles added to the repository, the RoMEO Gren project 
did provide several, perhaps les quantifiable, benefits. It provided a way for the Libraries 
to continue to reach out to faculty about scholarly communication isues; staf received 
fedback about faculty behavior and atitudes, and gained a beter understanding of the 
complexity of working around publishers? self-archiving policies; and it helped KU 
Libraries form relationships with some faculty members who later deposited more 
material in the repository. This is important because, as wil be discussed later, one of the 
ways communities in KU ScholarWorks become active submiters is through long-term 
relationship building with individual faculty members and departments. The library hopes 
that geting an early start in developing these relationships wil pay off later. (For a full 
description of the KU?s RoMEO Gren project, its methods and findings se Mercer and 
Emet, 2005) 
FACULTY RESOLUTION AND SECOND SCHOLARLY COMUNICATION 
SEMINAR 
 
In March 2005, the KU niversity Council, the governance body for faculty and 
profesional and academic staf of the University, pased a broad ?Resolution on Aces 
to Scholarly Information.? KU was the first member of the American Asociation of 
Universities (AU) to pas a resolution caling on its faculty to self-archive (Suber, 
2005). The resolution, a result of strong advocacy and involvement from Provost 
Shulenburger and Asistant Dean Fyffe, addreses current isues in scholarly 
communication, and cals on faculty to take such actions as amending their copyright 
transfer statements to alow them to deposit their work in KU ScholarWorks, and to 
become familiar with the publishing and busines practices of journals and support those 
that permit disemination through university repositories and other open aces models. 
The resolution also cals on the academy (University, profesional and scholarly 
asociations and administrators) to establish clear ?guidelines for merit and salary 
review?and promotion and tenure?that wil alow the asesment of and the atribution 
of appropriate credit for works published in such venues? as KU ScholarWorks 
(University of Kansas University Council, 2005). It cals on KU Libraries to provide 
resources to help faculty beter understand the busines practices of journal publishers 
and their impact on the scholarly communication system. 
 
Pasage of the resolution was timed to coincide both with the second Provost?s Seminar 
on Scholarly Communication (http:/ww.lib.ku.edu/scholcommSeminar.shtml), held in 
early March 2005, and with the official launch of the KU ScholarWorks repository. The 
second Provost?s Seminar focused specificaly on the role of digital repositories in the 
scholarly communication system, and brought leaders in the scholarly communication 
movement to the KU campus. The Seminar also included a demonstration of KU 
ScholarWorks. KU is not alone in choosing to announce its IR at a scholarly 
communication seminar; the University of New Mexico, for example, planned a similar 
event to announce its repository, also in March 2005 (Philips et al., 2005) . 
 
9 
 
While librarians had been talking informaly about KU ScholarWorks, and giving formal 
presentations to academic departments, research centers, and governance bodies for some 
time, there was a noticeable spike in interest in KU ScholarWorks following the 
Provost?s Seminar and pasage of the University Council resolution. Some academic 
departments requested that library subject liaisons atend a departmental meting to 
discuss KU ScholarWorks, and individual faculty contacted KU ScholarWorks 
administrators to inquire about the submision proces and items acepted for deposit. 
The University Council resolution is a significant acomplishment and is an indication of 
the importance of this isue to KU leadership and their commitment to addresing it, but 
the lasting impact of the resolution on the KU ScholarWorks repository is stil unclear. 
When the summer break approached, direct inquiries from faculty declined. Clearly, there 
is a need for a continued and sustained efort at keeping faculty aware of these isues, as 
they sem to respond when the opportunities are presented to them. 
 
ONGOING OUTREACH AND EDUCATION 
 
Since the events and publicity surrounding the official launch of KU ScholarWorks in 
March 2005, KU Libraries has continued to promote the repository on a smaler scale. 
Library staf have been communicating formaly and informaly with academic 
departments, making presentations at departmental metings, working with individual 
faculty members to deposit their materials, taking advantage of personal connections, and 
generaly looking for opportunities to discuss the repository program. The combination of 
education and outreach eforts has resulted in smal but growing KU ScholarWorks 
communities. 
 
Staf are also increasing outreach to and involvement of library subject liaisons. Subject 
liaisons have more regular contact with faculty members in their subject areas than KU 
Digital Initiatives staf do, and it is clear that their participation and support wil be 
crucial for a succesful repository program (Bel et al., 2005). The Libraries currently 
offer workshops on KU ScholarWorks to subject librarians so that they can become more 
familiar with the program and beter able to discuss it with faculty. Recently, usage 
statistics have been sent out monthly to library liaisons with data on the most-
downloaded items of the month. Liaisons can then send this information on to their 
faculty colleagues if they fel it is appropriate. 
 
An ?About KU ScholarWorks? Web site (http:/ww2.ku.edu/~scholar/) provides 
information about the repository service. The Web site includes a detailed FAQ, policy 
documents, text for grant applicants, and links to other pages about scholarly 
communication isues. A section on ?Working with Publishers? is intended to help 
educate users about intelectual property isues and give them some guidance in retaining 
or obtaining rights for their work. This section includes links to the Securing a Hybrid 
Environment for Research Preservation and Aces (SHERPA) Web site so that faculty 
may determine the policies of particular journals in which they publish, leter templates 
they can use when seking permision from publishers to post articles in the repository, 
 
10 
and an ?author?s addendum? that authors can use to modify their copyright transfer 
agrement with their publisher. (This addendum is based on the addendum created by 
SPARC, and was reviewed and approved by KU General Counsel.) 
ROMEO GREN (I) 
 
In early 2006, KU Libraries continued gathering faculty input by following up with a 
second phase of the RoMEO Gren project. This phase focused on asesing faculty 
perceptions of KU ScholarWorks, and identifying what conditions would encourage KU 
faculty to adopt greater use of the repository. Faculty who had responded favorably to 
requests to participate in the first phase of RoMEO Gren (by granting permision to have 
some of their published articles posted in KU ScholarWorks) were invited to atend focus 
groups. During the focus groups, they discussed their knowledge and impresions of KU 
ScholarWorks, the submision proces, departmental and disciplinary concerns about the 
repository, and any bariers to depositing their work. The twelve faculty who participated 
offered enthusiastic support for KU ScholarWorks. Some, though not al, regularly 
submited their work to the repository. Several broad isues emerged from the focus 
groups. 
 
Financial and administrative support. Faculty fel overburdened as it is and fel that they 
and their departments do not have the time or infrastructure to take on new 
responsibilities, to become familiar with copyright isues, or to learn the archiving 
policies of diferent publishers. They think that centralization of these activities would be 
more eficient. 
 
Policy and community isues. Staf detected some tension betwen the desire to set 
submision and content policies at the community level, and the need to understand and 
be asured of the consistency and quality of content in the repository across the entire 
institution. This suggests a possible need to iluminate more clearly the distinction 
betwen the aces and preservation functions of the repository, and the peer-review 
functions of formal publication. Staf working with the IR need to beter articulate to 
faculty that KU ScholarWorks is not intended to displace the traditional peer-review 
proces. 
 
Technological barriers. There were several suggestions for repository software changes 
or technology add-ons that would increase eficiency or lower technology bariers to 
participation (for example, the ability to automaticaly create PDF files as part of the 
submision proces). 
 
Marketing and education. There is a need for continued and more aggresive marketing 
about KU ScholarWorks and scholarly communication isues. Participants offered many 
suggestions for ways to publicize these isues. They also suggested that library staf make 
discussions of scholarly communication isues more concrete--rather than presenting 
abstract and formulaic explanations about the scholarly communication system. The 
Libraries would be more efective if it ?told succes stories.? Faculty want to hear 
 
11 
concrete examples of real benefits of participating in these programs, in terms they 
understand. 
 
A report was made to the KU Libraries Dean?s Council with recommendations for future 
actions based on IR user fedback. The recommendations included providing greater 
support for teaching faculty through staf-mediated projects, developing and 
implementing detailed marketing and education campaigns, and providing technology 
support to simplify the submision proces. The report was wel received, and the Dean 
of Libraries presented the report to IS leadership. Information Services is currently 
involved in strategic planning, and it is expected that many ideas wil be implemented in 
support of the planning proces. 
 
 
PART WO / OBSERVATIONS AND ASESMENT 
 
SUCESFUL KU SCHOLARWORKS COMUNITIES 
 
KU has adopted a somewhat labor intensive approach to encourage submisions to KU 
ScholarWorks that relies on building relationships with individual faculty authors, but 
more importantly, with potential KU ScholarWorks communities. Informal communities 
include those communities established as part of the RoMEO Gren project, as wel as 
those that were created at the request of an individual faculty member or researcher, 
without departmental support. Thirty-one (72%) of the forty-thre KU ScholarWorks 
communities are informal, and lack a designated community administrator or signed 
memorandum of agrement. Formal communities have an identified community 
administrator who acts as a point of contact, and is empowered to make decisions on 
behalf of the community. A memorandum of agrement outlines the formal relationship 
betwen a community and KU ScholarWorks 
(http:/ww2.ku.edu/~scholar/docs/memorandum.shtml). Although informal 
communities make up 72% of the total number of communities, they acount for only 
19% of total items deposited. Formal commitments with campus units sem to build 
stronger relationships and provide structure for ongoing community development, content 
recruitment, and faculty support. 
 
Gibbons noted that understanding the needs of faculty is necesary to build a repository 
program, and implementers must create "a tailored and personalized impresion" to 
which faculty can relate (2004). Communities also have their own personalities, needs 
and uses for a repository, and it is important to develop relationships with them to 
understand those needs. KU ScholarWorks communities have come into being and grown 
in a variety of ways. The following thre examples of succesful communities wil 
ilustrate this proces: 
 
Author Advocacy. The personal communications established through the RoMEO Gren 
project increased many participants? awarenes of their rights as authors. When one 
faculty member was asked to supply the author final draft of his work, he initialy 
declined, but did expres an interest in understanding why he was not asked to supply the 
 
12 
publisher's versions. He prefered to have the final published version available, rather 
than the author final draft. This profesor had served as editor of a scholarly society 
journal, and he used those profesional connections to gain permision for KU to post in 
KU ScholarWorks the publisher versions of al articles, present and future, authored by 
KU faculty in that society's journals. In this case, staf eforts did not result in one of the 
desired outcomes of the project (for faculty to deposit their own work), but it did lead to 
one author's beter understanding of publisher policies and author rights, and 35 
additional articles posted. Perhaps even more importantly, a faculty member became an 
agent of change. As Rogers states in his work Difusion of Innovations, a "change agent's 
position is often midway betwen the change agency" (in this case, the University), and 
the client system (the scholarly society). The faculty member was able to efect change 
because he was an efective "linker" betwen the interests of the University and its 
faculty, and the scholarly society as publisher (2003). 
 
Department-Mediated Submisions: The School of Law and the Department of Public 
Administration have adopted a mediated proces whereby an appointe from the 
academic unit submits al work on behalf of authors. While to date only two items have 
been submited to the Public Administration community using this method, the School of 
Law has over 120 items in its community. Public Administration and Law have 
experienced diferent outcomes based on this model, and RoMEO Gren faculty focus 
groups expresed doubts that al departments would have the resources to take on such a 
task. Stil, a centralized approach to community development may prove an efective 
submision method for other campus units. 
 
Graduate Student Project Submisions: A final example demonstrates how the first 
student content was deposited into KU ScholarWorks. The School of Engineering ofers 
profesionals employed in engineering firms the opportunity to pursue an advanced 
degre in Engineering Management at KU's Edwards Campus. The Engineering 
Management program does not have a thesis requirement, but instead requires students to 
submit a field project. The field projects were submited in print to the program and 
retained in the program offices, and a second copy was placed on reserve in the library on 
the Edwards Campus. After the library director at the Edwards Campus atended a KU 
ScholarWorks information sesion, she determined KU ScholarWorks would be a more 
eficient method to diseminate and store the field projects. She approached the 
Engineering Management program director, and he supported adoption of a new 
procedure using KU ScholarWorks. Students continue to submit field projects to the 
Engineering Management program, and Edwards Campus library staf then deposit an 
electronic copy in KU ScholarWorks. 
 
BY THE NUMBERS 
 
In an earlier paper describing eforts to populate KU ScholarWorks, Mercer and Emet 
stated, "KU ScholarWorks wil fil its role as an institutional repository when its contents 
are representative of the vast research output from the many disciplines at KU" (2005). 
As of September 1, 2006, there are 759 items in forty-thre KU ScholarWorks 
communities or, on average, 17.65 items per community. While the number of items 
 
13 
available in KU ScholarWorks continues to increase, it hardly represents the depth or 
breadth of scholarship produced by KU faculty. In addition, the number of items 
available in KU ScholarWorks is far fewer than the median for Asociation of Research 
Libraries (ARL) members with repositories (University of Houston Libraries' 
Institutional Repository Task Force, 2006). This is despite the extensive promotion of 
the repository over the course of several years. Why are the numbers lower than expected 
at this stage, and what can staf learn from this? 
 
First, one must be careful not to read too much into these numbers. Lynch and Lippincott, 
in their survey of U.S. repositories, recognized that comparing repositories by size is 
problematic because 
 
..no two institutions are counting the same things. We received reports of the 
number of objects ranging from hundreds of thousands to, at the low end, a few 
dozen. The diversity in both the definition of what constitutes an "object" and in 
the nature of the objects being stored (masive videos or groups of datasets as 
opposed to individual articles or images) makes repository size very hard to 
interpret, or to relate to space measurements (2005). 
 
In addition, a count of total items in a repository does not take into acount factors such 
as whether items were archived by authors or by proxies. The libraries have not been 
proactive in identifying for submision items such as working papers and technical 
reports that are already available on departmental Web sites. KU has taken an approach 
that relies on building relationships with individual faculty authors and potential 
communities, and encourages self-archiving. Most of the content in KU ScholarWorks 
has been self-archived by individuals or submited through their community 
administrator, as opposed to a library staf-mediated model. 
 
Another metric for measuring the succes and impact of a repository is usage, which can 
be measured by the number of searches performed and number of items downloaded 
from the repository (Shearer, 2003). The DSpace usage logs at KU show that the 
repository is searched regularly and items are frequently acesed. 
 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
KU has employed a variety of methods to encourage its faculty to take more control of 
the intelectual rights of their future works using the IR as a disemination tool. As 
outlined in this paper, staf?s multifaceted approach has utilized the eforts of University 
and Library top administrators, IR staf, library subject specialists, early adopters, and 
advisory board members to populate the repository. KU ScholarWorks continues to grow 
at a slow but steady pace, with several succesful and active communities. Stil, KU 
Libraries are striving for higher participation, and can make some general observations 
and conclusions about its approach so far. 
 
 
14 
Based on the experiences at KU and those reported by colleagues at other institutions, 
library staf know there is work yet to do to increase the rate of adoption of the IR. KU 
ScholarWorks has relied heavily on the "self-archiving" model for institutional 
repositories, where authors deposit their own works with litle asistance from their 
academic units or the Libraries. This model asumes faculty have made, or are wiling to 
make, the behavioral change required to deposit their published and unpublished 
scholarship. While ultimately this behavioral shift is a desired outcome, the reality may 
wel be that faculty wil be more wiling to self-archive when there is more content 
available in the repository. Indeed, faculty stated as much during the RoMEO Gren 
focus groups. More content in the IR can serve as indirect evidence that current practice 
is shifting. Until contributing to an IR is an integral part of the scholars? social system 
(and hence normal practice), they are not likely to use a repository (Jones et al., 2006). 
 
Institutional repositories are stil in the early stages of development. Everet Rogers? 
innovation difusion model defines five stages of progresion: knowledge, persuasion, 
decision, implementation, and confirmation (2003). KU is firmly in the decision stage, 
with some enthusiastic early adopters and departments commited to using the repository. 
The University of Kansas is an early adopter of an institutional repository, although 
individual faculty are at various stages along the adoption continuum. A handful of 
authors regularly submit their work to KU ScholarWorks, but they are not yet activists 
who encourage and persuade their peers to submit. The chalenge wil be to continue 
developing methods to encourage uptake so that KU ScholarWorks wil move through 
the implementation phase and become part of the fabric of faculty practice at KU. 
 
While mandates may eventualy be the best way to ensure comprehensive capture of the 
output of an institution, those running IRs must continue to pursue other means of 
applying social and administrative presure to persuade faculty to deposit their works. 
Other institutions, such as the Masachusets Institute of Technology, have found that 
identifying and working with an "insider advocate" is a more efective means of 
increasing deposits (Baudoin and Branschofsky, 2003) . A respected member of the 
faculty might influence behavior more than administrative encouragement. Identifying 
more insider advocates or activists, who wil promote KU ScholarWorks, is a logical next 
step for continued development of KU's institutional repository program. 
 
KU has experienced several changes in leadership in 2006. With a new Provost and 
several new deans (including a new Dean of Libraries), the Libraries have an opportunity 
to work with these new campus leaders to market the KU ScholarWorks service and 
spark changes in faculty behavior. Staf are hopeful that IS leadership wil act on faculty 
recommendations outlined in the RoMEO Gren report. The report cals for increased 
support for library-mediated submisions, and enhancements that wil make faculty self-
archiving easier, such as conversion to the PDF format as part of the submision proces. 
 
Expanding KU ScholarWorks to include more graduate student work is a priority for 
Digital Initiatives. During focus groups, faculty expresed strong support for inclusion of 
theses and disertations in KU ScholarWorks. Inclusion of electronic theses and 
disertations (ETDs) wil increase total submisions to the repository, but wil also 
 
15 
provide greater exposure for graduate student work. Staf wil also expand the number of 
KU ScholarWorks contributors by ofering to host papers and presentations given at 
conferences and symposia sponsored by KU. 
 
KU wil continue a personalized approach to encouraging use of KU ScholarWorks. 
While staf wil continue to work with individual faculty, more energy wil be directed 
toward establishing formal communities, where the most significant growth in items has 
occurred. As the number of KU ScholarWorks comunities continues to rise, staf wil 
work even more closely with library subject specialists, so that they can efectively 
market the repository service. Staf wil continue to sponsor periodic focus groups with 
KU ScholarWorks users, and others engaged in alternative methods for research 
disemination. KU ScholarWorks community practices wil be documented by ?teling 
stories,? so that faculty understand how KU ScholarWorks reflects their own disciplinary 
work practices. 
 
IR administrators and advocates have the responsibility and chalenge to continue to 
make faculty aware of the repository and related scholarly communication isues. This 
can be done by promoting the repository and engaging in dialogue with faculty as much 
as possible. Use of the repository by KU faculty is tied in part to larger trends in the 
academic world. As self-archiving becomes an increasingly acepted part of academic 
practice, KU faculty wil wish to participate in that practice, and KU Libraries must 
position KU ScholarWorks to met their needs as wel as the needs of the institution as a 
whole. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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