University of Utah’s open source software extends power of CONTENTdm for institutional repositories

The reasons why institutional repositories (IRs) continue to be an oft-discussed topic within your organization may be the same as those the University of Utah Marriott Library’s staff identified when they assessed the IR environment in June 2007:
• Access to scholarly communication is costly and limited to a privileged few 
• The scholarly community does not own the rights to its own work
• Knowledge created at universities is difficult for the average user to find and retrieve
• The intellectual capital of universities is not being preserved for future generations

Working from these assumptions, the Library staff proceeded to address the largely non-technical steps necessary to work towards their mission: “To collect, maintain, preserve, record and provide access to the intellectual capital and output of the University of Utah, to reflect the University's excellence, and to share that work with others.”

With a highly successful digitization program consisting of several million online items available through CONTENTdm, it was a logical step to use CONTENTdm as their IR as well. “CONTENTdm works for all of our other digital collections and we have limited resources in terms of staff and hardware,” said Kenning Arlitsch (Associate Director Administrative and IT Services, Marriott Libraries). “The IR functionality is there in CONTENTdm and this is not a technical problem, so why make it one?”

Since CONTENTdm already had the technical functionality to support their IR, the University of Utah focused on addressing workflow challenges. The staff identified specific goals that they wanted to address: develop an effective way to share information; improve the efficiency of copyright research; reduce their backlog; develop accountability for intellectual capital and treat each scholarly work as an inventory item, which can be tracked and reported on.

To aid in meeting these challenges, the Library’s staff developed the U-SKIS software, an open source workflow system used with CONTENTdm. The University of Utah has been running U-SKIS since 2007 and has quadrupled the growth of their IR in that time. U-SKIS is distributed via SourceForge and it freely available for your institutional repository.

[Institutional Repository for the University of Utah: uspace.utah.edu]

U-SKIS - University Scholarly Knowledge Inventory System

U-SKIS tracks items or citations prior to ingest to CONTENTdm. This provides a workspace for staff to determine what can be added to the repository based on publishers’ archiving policies and to efficiently manage every stage of this process.

The software tracks files, attaches metadata, tracks communications and publisher policies, and deposits the files and metadata into CONTENTdm. U-SKIS uses the Dublin Core standard to apply metadata to documents, which are then re-used once the item is ready to be added to the repository.

Publishers’ policies: Addressing one of the most challenging areas of IR development, the University of Utah team gathered publishers’ policies over a six-month period by consulting publisher Web sites, SHERPA/RoMEO and by directly contacting publishers via e-mail. For each item, a publisher record indicates if the item can be archived and which version can be archived (post-print or publisher's PDF). The system also includes mechanisms to support change. For example, information on respective embargo periods is included and items that fall within an embargo period sit in an embargo queue and can be sent to the repository once they have been cleared. Publisher records are updated to reflect any changes, but mechanisms are also in place to save permission history so that it is possible to point to permission granted at a certain period in time.

Faculty involvement: Records are created for each faculty member involved in the IR. These records can be used to compile statistics regarding the number of people involved and from what college and/or department. The system also houses authors' curriculum vitae so that repository staff can work through past publications.

Stakeholder communication: U-SKIS tracks communication between digital repository staff, publishers and content creators. The system also includes searching and reporting features that assist in the permission and acquisitions process, as well as in collection development decisions. The system is adaptable and extensible to suit the needs of individual institutions.

Additional U-SKIS resources:
• ALA Midwinter 2008 conference presentation by Kenning Arlitsch and Anne Morrow, University of Utah, Marriott Library: http://www.oclc.org/contentdm/news/conferences/alajan08videos.htm.
• More information about U-SKIS is available in the Downloads section of the CONTENTdm User Support Center: http://www.contentdm.com/login/login.asp (log-on is required)
• SourceForge download location: http://sourceforge.net/projects/u-skis/
• U-SKIS was written in Perl 5.5 and uses a MySQL database.

University of Utah Marriott Libraries contact information:
• Allyson Mower, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian
(801) 585-5458 allyson.mower@utah.edu
• Anne Morrow, Digital Initiatives Librarian
(801) 581-8594 anne.morrow@utah.edu
• Scott Cowley, Senior Programmer
(801) 581-3777 scott.cowley@utah.edu
• Kenning Arlitsch, Associate Director for IT Services
(801) 585-3721 kenning.arlitsch@utah.edu

OCLC contact information:
• Ron Gardner, OCLC Digital Services Consultant
(800) 848-5878 gardnerr@oclc.org
• Jill Fluvog, Director
(360)866-0579 fluvogj@oclc.org

(2008 10 27)