Institutional Repositories

The invisible & unwritten rules of Project Management in ETD

Collection Building

PM Life Cycle according to the textbook

• Feasibility study

• Business analysis

• Planning, designing & resourcing

• Execution

• Implementation

• Close out

PMthe real-world perspective

Core elements

Scope

Time

Cost

Quality

Means to achieve

Integration

People

Communication

Risk

Project Risk Managementrisk areas

• Human Resources management

• QA

• Collections

• Equipment & IT

• Internet access

• Scheduling & rate of production

Project Management and people

Textbook

Staff acquisitions

Team development

What happens

Urgent vs important

University calendar

Training & retraining

Quality Assurance

Metadata

Developing guidelines

Developing subject thesauri

Training

Peer review

Digital files

Agreeing an accepted standard

Random sampling of pages, graphs, appendices

Integrity of digital file with print version

Front & content pages

Collections

• Agree scope of collection & timelines

• Integrate workflow across:

student & supervisor

Dean & Faculty

Registrar & bureaucracy

Library & internal processes

Internet access

• Webpage development

• Skills & training • Dependence on NRF

• Protection of content • Managed access • Copyright issues

Rate of production

• Project host (NRF/CHELSA) expectations

• Unrealistic target setting

• Misjudged scheduling

• Metadata production dependent on digital file production (Greenstone; D Space?)

• Impact on staff morale

• Impact on project progress

Monitoring production

• Spreadsheets to monitor

• Set targets (realistic ones)

individuals

weekly totals

• Weekly production meetings

Lessons learned6 phases of a project

• Enthusiasm

• Disillusionment

• Panic

• Search for the guilty

• Punishment of the innocent

• Praise & honours for the non-participants

Lessons learned on the ground

• Allocate time for initial team training• Digitisation projects are about managing

production lines • Pressured environment driven by budgets &

timelines • Direct correlation between high output and team

size• Anticipate varying capacity levels across team• Not to be bolted onto existing workload of staff

members

In conclusionChallenges

• Team development is time-consuming & demanding

• Role boundaries must be clear

• Anticipate problems

• Manage change

• Don’t become dependent on 2-3 key people

Institutional Repositories

Evaluating the impact of the ETD collection in the institution

Current dilemma

• IRs are innovative but often marginalised technologies

• Difficult to demonstrate impact on the research enterprise of the university

• University Administrators doubt the “institutional good” without demonstrable evidence

• No consensus on agreed set of Performance Indicators (PI) or metrics

ReRR launched for the right reasons in 2006

• Enhanced visibility of research outputs • Increased dissemination of institutional

scholarship• Preservation & long-term access to

institutional scholarship• Opportunity to educate faculty &

researchers about ©, open access publishing

ReRR – innovation caught between a rock…

• Within RU viewed as a library activity & resource

• Reliance on quantitative PIs to demonstrate benefit

• Open access publishing is not without costs

• Few libraries have dedicated budgets for IR operating costs

…and a hard place

• High usage evidence suggests IRs part of the “research good” – not recognised by University Administrators

• Research policy & decision makers unconvinced that IR is a strategic research tool

• Low awareness among Faculty & few incentives to use open access publishing

• Reliance on non-strategic PIs to evaluate

Quantitative PIs used to evaluate IR services

• Gross number of items as well as retrieval using hits & downloads

• Levels of active community engagement (gappy vs continuous)

• Time-increment measures vs one-time only counts

• Content material types (proportion of pre-print or post-print items)

Qualitative PIs used to evaluate impact

• Fit between IR, organisational infrastructure (policy, culture, goals) & technical infrastructure

• Levels of flexibility & interoperability (end-user, system & services)

• Non-use by research community to deposit content

• Quality & extent of participation levels ie content building & usage

Assessing the “fit” between innovation & institution

• Continuum consists of inputs, outputs & outcomes (content, services & systems)

• Gather evidence iro workflow efficiencies associated with the innovation (quantitative)

• Gather evidence that demonstrates the extent to which the IR has an effect on the individual /collective research community (qualitative)

IR evaluation: distinguish between your goals

• Significant PIs – mainly qualitative measures to gather evidence of impact on the research enterprise at end-user, institutional & national level

• Secondary level PIs – mainly quantitative measures that demonstrate efficiencies & effectiveness

ReRR – Performance Indicator framework

Inputs

(Content)

Outputs

(Services & Systems)

Impact

(Benefit)

End-user quantitative More quantitative

qualitative

Research community:institutional

quantitative More quantitative

qualitative

Research community:national

quantitative More quantitative

qualitative

Significant PIs should show University Administrators…

• Whether the IR is working according to plan • Can the IR work better and for what purpose• Are there lessons from current initiatives that

need to be heeded • What has emerged as important • Is there a significant impact on the individual or

collective research community • What is its potential to strengthen, improve &

raise the visibility of the individual or collective research community