goals and vision for a repository

Last week I had the opportunity to have a lengthy conversation with some folks about our Repository. In doing so I was able to get at some really simplified statements about our activities.

Why a Repository?

• A growing body of the scholarly communications and research produced in our institutions exists solely in digital form.
• Valuable assets -- secondary or gray scholarship such as proceedings, white papers, presentations, working papers, and datasets -- are being lost or not reproduced.
• Numerous online digital collections and databases produced through research activity are not formally managed and are at risk.
• An institutional repository is needed as a trusted system to permanently archive, steward, and manage access to the intellectual work – both research and teaching – of a university.
• Open Access, Open Access, Open Access and Preservation, Preservation, Preservation.

What's the vision for a Repository?

• A new scholarly publishing paradigm: an outlet for the open distribution of scholarly output as part of the open access movement.
• A trusted digital repository for collections.
• A cumulative and perpetual archive for an institution.

What does success look like?

• Improved open access and visibility of digital scholarship and collections.
• Participation from a variety of units, departments, and disciplines at the institution.
• Usable process and standards for adding content.
• Content is actively added.
• Content is used: searched and cited and downloaded.
• There is a wide variety of content types.
• Simple counts are NOT a metric.

I really appreciate having the chance to formulate ideas like these that have nothing to do with the technology but everything to do with why we're doing what we do. I want to work this up into something more formal to share broadly.