Schedule and program for the 5th annual Northeast Institutional Repository Day (NIRD) conference, held virtually on Thursday, November 30, 2023 (1:00-4:00 pm ET) and Friday, December 1, 2023 (10:00 am - 12:00 pm ET).

The purpose of this presentation is that it is perfectly okay to instill flexibility to change an institutional repository (IR) platform that will improve the (IR) user experience. New to the IR landscape in 2019 this was the first IR at this academic institution. Even with an ambitious focus to make this a shiny IR resource it fell short in its mission. It was time to go back to the drawing board in 2022, post-Covid pandemic, to search the IR landscape for a new generation IR. The goal was to have an abundance of modern features in the IR that would survive past the expiration date of staleness. Agility to change is necessary and making the change in a timely matter can benefit both library users of the IR and the library staff overseeing the IR. After four years with an IR platform the change in 2023 to a new IR platform that became a successful launching pad for new IR experience.

Members from Cornell University Library's IT department share lessons learned from two attempts to migrate their DSpace 6.3 repository to the new DSpace 7.6 infrastructure. Learn about performance tuning, customizations, streamlined and secure access, containerization, and more!

The Archives and Distinctive Collections at the College of the Holy Cross is in the second half of a two-year CLIR "Digitizing Hidden Collections" grant project to preserve and provide access to key components of the Deaf Catholic Archives (DCA). Ideally, digital content would be accessible through both the institutional repository as well as the archival finding aids. Wonder how we did it? The project utilized three systems (Digital Commons, ArchivesSpace and Google) to efficiently upload thousands of items to our repository and link them to their respective finding aids. This presentation will discuss how we worked to build the repository structures and then developed workflows to create and populate an online collection that allows multiple access points for a large, complex, and growing archive. As this work continues, the next phase of the grant will use another tool to create exhibits using our IR, thus facilitating additional access, promotion and outreach efforts. These efforts, as well as the creation of metadata and description, will intentionally include input from members of the Deaf community here at Holy Cross and in partnership with others. Our experience offers suggestions for how to build out a large collection with several structures that require different technical treatments. We have already begun adapting them for other digitization projects. Though we used specific platforms, this presentation will demonstrate how different applications can be harnessed for a large, long-term project.

In this talk, I will discuss my experience surveying and editing the metadata of a large crowdsourced public history archive. The Our Marathon collection includes nearly 8,000 items, with materials ranging from letters to collages to oral histories and other first-person accounts collected in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Along the way, collaborations were established between Northeastern University and the NPR radio station, WBUR, the Boston Globe, and the Boston Public Library. This archive bears some resemblance to other projects that used crowdsourced materials in response to a public trauma, such as the September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank relating the experiences of Katrina and Rita. I added to and edited the Metadata Object Description Schema (or MODS) records from this collection, in order to clarify the copyright status, associated names and subjects of these materials, as well as the languages used in certain items, so as to improve discoverability for researchers viewing the collection through Northeastern University Library's Digital Repository Service. One of the biggest issues with these records initially was their lack of standardization and authorities, and in order to address these problems I needed to develop new ways of searching and surveying this collection. In working with this collection, I have realized that it presents some challenges that are perhaps unique to such a large, crowdsourced response to a shared trauma. Because this is a kind of memorial, with a goal of both community building and healing, it is important for users to be able to access this material on their own terms. Yet the large number of items in this collection require organization to allow for meaningful access.

Over the past twenty years, institutional repositories (IRs) have become commonplace across most colleges and universities. While IRs were originally conceived as a means to collect and disseminate faculty scholarship, in recent years it has become apparent that this may not be the most effective use case for the modern IR. In light of this changing landscape, how should IR managers think about the IR today? This session will provide an overview of the forthcoming book Rethinking Institutional Repositories, published by ACRL, which seeks to answer this question through contributions from IR managers at a wide range of institutions. The session will also briefly highlight several case studies from the book that provide practical suggestions for managing the modern IR, developing innovative projects and use cases for the IR, and using the IR as a means to highlight and showcase diverse voices and viewpoints and to provide an inclusive platform for all members of the community.