Librarians at Duquesne University did a soft rollout of their institutional repository in 2016, with a full rollout planned for 2017. Elsevier\u27s acquisition of Digital Commons prompted a reevaluation of the marketing plan. The Outreach & Communications Librarian, Digital Scholarship Librarian, and Systems Librarian approached this problem collaboratively to craft (and rebrand) a marketing message

Kliewer, Christie

Phillips, Gesina A.

English

Duquesne University: Digital Commons

Duquesne UniversityDuquesne Scholarship CollectionLibrary Faculty Scholarship Gumberg Library3-2018Flexible Marketing and Outreach: An InstitutionalRepository Case StudyGesina A. PhillipsDuquesne University, phillipsg@duq.eduChristie KliewerDuquesne University, kliewerc@duq.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/library-scholarshipPart of the Scholarly Communication CommonsThis Conference Poster is brought to you for free and open access by the Gumberg Library at Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Library Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contactphillipsg@duq.edu.Repository CitationPhillips, G. A., & Kliewer, C. (2018). Flexible Marketing and Outreach: An Institutional Repository Case Study. Retrieved fromhttps://dsc.duq.edu/library-scholarship/17Flexible Marketing and Outreach: An Institutional Repository Case StudyGesina A. Phillips and Christie Kliewer | Gumberg Library, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh PAWider ContextOn August 2, 2017, Elsevier announced its acquisition of bepress. This announcement was perceived as being part of a greater strategy to focus more on the lifecycle of  knowledge production.² Open access advocates warned that Elsevier’s expressed interest in preprints—presaged by its purchase of SSRN—constituted an attempt to co-optavenues for open scholarship, or “OA opportunism.”³The initial response to the bepress acquisition was fervent. In October of 2017, PennLibraries announced their intention to migrate their repository from the Digital Commons platform (“Operation beprexit”).⁴ Repository administrators discussed potential exit strategies and infrastructural barriers on backchannels such as Twitter and listservs. However, subsequent action to break away from Elsevier has been less well-publicized. The features that originally made Digital Commons the best choice for many institutions—including hosting, integrated support for journal publishing, and robustcustomer service—have made it difficult for repository managers to adopt new platforms.Duquesne ContextGumberg Library acquired the bepress institutional repository platform, Digital Commons, in March 2016. The platform instance, named Duquesne Digital Commons (DDC), was purchased jointly with the Duquesne Center for Legal Information. A Digital Commons Implementation Team (DCIT) was formed, composed of representatives from both libraries. The team at Gumberg Library consisted of the Digital ScholarshipLibrarian, the Outreach & Communications Librarian, and the Systems Librarian.DDC went live in October 2016, with the intention of using a period of “soft rollout” to collect content and recruit open access champions on campus. Limited marketing was conducted during this time, resulting in some interest by faculty members in mediated deposit; outreach efforts were more successful in recruiting individual collections such as student journals. The platform was intended to be marketed fully to the campusbeginning in Spring 2017.The ApproachIn response to the acquisition, librarians at Duquesne began to consider other options. Like many other institutions, the turnkey system of Digital Commons enabled a great deal of functionality to be managed by a small staff. Open source alternatives required morelabor in terms of setup and maintenance, and other supported platforms tended to have costly setup or maintenance fees. No one platform offered a clear and immediate exit solution.However, it became clear that our approach to the platform had not been future-focused. Our repository name, Duquesne Digital Commons, would not transfer well to a new platform. As our public promotion under this name had been limited, we decided todefer the full rollout of the repository in order to take the time to rename. We would then be able to make a renewed outreach effort with a new name and branding.How We Did ItRenaming the platform required a concerted effort to convince stakeholders of theimportance of distancing the idea of the repository from the current software in use. This process is charted on the accompanying timeline. The Outreach & Communications, Digital Scholarship, and Systems librarians began to discuss next steps immediately following the acquisition, and planned meetings with other stakeholders (the University Librarian, DCIT, bepress, and University Marketing) beginning in September 2017. The process of getting buy-in on the idea, coming up with options for and voting on a new name, and coordinating the changing of the visual design and URL within the platform took until late February 2018.We created an initial marketing and communications plan in late October 2017, andrevisited it in January 2018 as we began to implement changes to the repository. Although there is a great deal of student work hosted in DSC, faculty members are our targetaudience. Promotion and outreach will therefore focus mainly on open access education, promoting the ease of use of the platform, and emphasizing the connections to existing library services (such as research impact consultations).In our branding, we wanted to create a style guide that fits with the conservative style expectation of the campus community while also drawing attention to helpful information in a pleasant way. We began with the red and blue university colors, but used different hues in order to distinguish our materials from otherUniversity branding (and also to avoid conflicts with their style guide). We chose to create a logo that included both theacronym “DSC” (used in our URL, dsc.duq.edu) and the fulltitle “Duquesne Scholarship Collection.”  Next Steps and Lessons LearnedAlthough we have now more intentionally taken ownership of DSC, the difficult work of explaining the function and benefits of the platform to our users remains to be done. We intend to create our own digital graphics for use in various communications platforms (and to make them easy to edit and adapt) to raise awareness of the existence of theplatform. In terms of targeting faculty, we plan to use a more viral and education-focused strategy through small flyers, infographic posters, and bookmarks. These materials will be more specific, focusing on how the repository can assist with open access scholarship and increased visibility for publications, faculty testimonials, and descriptive diagrams of the workflow for submitting to the platform. We will employ the promotion and brandingdecisions that we made in response to the platform acquisition to market DSC as an idea and a service apart from its underlying infrastructure. We’ve learned to be more adaptive, proactive in arguing for ideas and resources, and future-focused as a result of this process, and now advocate that other institutions re-evaluate vendor-owned systems to ensure that they are branded and conceptualized as essential library services regardless of the platform in use.References1. Hayes, Clayton. “SSRN Begins Removing Papers Over ‘Copyright Concerns.’” Wayne State Univer-sity. Scholars Cooperative, July 19, 2017. https://blogs.wayne.edu/scholarscoop/2016/07/19/ssrn-be-gins-removing-papers-over-copyright-concerns/2. Schonfeld, Roger. “Elsevier acquires bepress.” The Scholarly Kitchen, August 2, 2017. https://schol-arlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/08/02/elsevier-acquires-bepress/3. Pooley, Jefferson. “Scholarly communications shouldn’t just be open, but non-profit too.” The London School of Economics and Political Science. The Impact Blog, August 15, 2017. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/15/scholarly-communications-shouldnt-just-be-open-but-non-profit-too4. Penn Libraries. “Penn Libraries to End Partnership with bepress.” Operation beprexit. October 9, 2017. https://beprexit.wordpress.com/official-statement/For an institution without the means to migrate their platform at present, the bepress acquisition is a call to action to examine structures and branding which are needlessly tied to for-profitplatforms. This poster describes the efforts undertaken at Duquesne University to rebrand ourrepository in an effort to enable future flexibility agnostic of the repository platform in use.May July• Purchased DDC • Elsevier acquiresSSRN• Elsevier accused of “copyright sweeps” in SSRN¹• DDC goes live• ETD collectionmigration begins• Bulletin ofEcumenicalTheology added• Duquesne CriminalLaw Journal addedJanuary February2018• Gathered Fragmentscollection added• First Class collection added• New marketing plan• DSC chosen as platform name• D.U. Quark collection added• Banner finalized• URL & banner change through bepress• Logo designed• Promotion plannedJune August October December2017• Elsevier acquiresbepress• First unsolicitedfaculty work posted• Partnership formedfor Universitypublishing• DCIT meeting• First work posted to library collection• Marketing planrough draft• Penn Librariesannounce“Operation beprexit”• Discussionbegins with University Marketing• URSS, GSRScollections added• Online ETDsubmission begins• Discussion withLibrary DirectorMarch September• Discussion beginswith bepress• Naming optionsdiscussed, poll initiated for DCITNovemberOctober2016March November

Flexible Marketing and Outreach: An Institutional Repository Case Study

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Flexible Marketing and Outreach: An Institutional Repository Case Study

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