DIY IR Migration I: Platforms, legacy practice, and outreach

Abstract

In May 2019, the Cornell University Library (CUL) decided to consolidate multiple institutional repositories into a single instance (eCommons) of a single platform (DSpace) in order to utilize library resources more efficiently, and achieve local control of all of the university’s IR infrastructure and content. This process involved the migration of over 30,000 items from two school-focused repositories running on bepress's Digital Commons platform – DigitalCommons@ILR, serving Cornell's ILR School, and the Scholarly Commons, serving the School of Hotel Administration – to eCommons. Work began on the project in February 2020, with the goal of migrating both repositories by the end of the calendar year. This effort involved librarians and staff from multiple departments and units, including CUL Information Technology, Metadata Services, the Martin P. Catherwood Library, and the Nestlé Library Library. This lightning talk will briefly cover the conditions at Cornell that initially led to the establishment of multiple IRs, as well as the changing conditions that led to this migration and consolidation. The focus will be the challenges faced by the repository managers of the three repositories, and how they were addressed, specifically: - Accounting for differences in features between platforms, such as readership maps and college-specific branding, - Outreach to internal and external stakeholders regarding the change, many of whom have relied on repository support for over a decade, - Investigating the ""skeletons in the closet"" that have accrued since DC@ILR was launched in 2004 and Scholarly Commons in 2013, and managing the myriad details necessary to establish sustainable processes and infrastructure moving forward.