Technical Reports in the Repository: Syncing a unique grey literature collection in multiple library systems

Abstract

Academic Commons is the digital repository of Columbia University and its affiliated institutions. Currently over 32,000 works are accessible through this portal. However, finding new ways to add unique collections and their metadata to the institutional repository (IR) is a constant challenge. One of those unique collections are the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory Technical Reports, a set of scientific geoscience reports dating from 1949 to 2003. A cross-departmental team at Columbia University Libraries set out to digitize 298 of these technical papers comprising 32,597 pages and including 151 foldouts of various sizes. Metadata was already largely available through WorldCat and for this reason a workflow was devised that enabled the team to reuse that existing MARC metadata from OCLC WordCat and at the same time increase access and visibility of these resources by making them digitally available through WorldCat, HathiTrust, CLIO, (Columbia’s local integrated library system (ILS)), Internet Archive, and Academic Commons (the IR). This new workflow involves digitization of the original print reports, cataloging of the physical and digital copies, dynamically cross-walking (via HySync, an internal application) the MARC metadata from the ILS to a MODS-based format in Academic Commons, where the reports were assigned DOIs and made available for download. Since the collection was made available in the IR in September of 2020, the items have been viewed over 6,000 times and downloaded nearly 3,000 times. This presentation will outline the individual steps comprising the new workflow, from selection over digitization and cataloging to discovery, the benefits enabled by this collaboration across departmental lines, but also address the challenges encountered along the way.