Presentation Type
Lightning Talk
Date
2021-11-17
Description
The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic initially caused widespread academic conference cancellations, leaving many University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) faculty members without a means to present scholarship required for the annual review process. Faculty members concerned about meeting their scholarship requirements appealed to campus administration for assistance. UTHSC’s Health Sciences Library (HSL) was able to step in and offer the library-managed UTHSC Digital Commons repository as a solution to this dilemma. The urgency of faculty concerns, combined with positive messaging about Digital Commons coming from campus administration, increased campus interest in the repository. Ultimately, as conferences transitioned to virtual formats and were rescheduled, the need for Digital Commons to host conference scholarship did not come to fruition. In spite of this, the increased awareness of the repository helped the library overcome some of the common barriers to faculty buy in. This opportunity led to a relatively rapid period of growth for UTHSC Digital Commons in 2020-2021, compared to pre-Covid growth, resulting in several new collections and increased understanding of the benefits of the IR for the campus.
Keywords
institutional repositories, health sciences, Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries, MIRL, MIRL 2021, Covid-19 pandemic, conferences, faculty
Open Access
1
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2021 Langford and Watts
Repository Citation
Langford, Jennifer M. and Watts, Randall, "Riding the Wave: Getting Faculty on Board with the IR During the Pandemic" (2021). Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL). 6.
https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/mirl/2021/program/6
Riding the Wave: Getting Faculty on Board with the IR During the Pandemic
The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic initially caused widespread academic conference cancellations, leaving many University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) faculty members without a means to present scholarship required for the annual review process. Faculty members concerned about meeting their scholarship requirements appealed to campus administration for assistance. UTHSC’s Health Sciences Library (HSL) was able to step in and offer the library-managed UTHSC Digital Commons repository as a solution to this dilemma. The urgency of faculty concerns, combined with positive messaging about Digital Commons coming from campus administration, increased campus interest in the repository. Ultimately, as conferences transitioned to virtual formats and were rescheduled, the need for Digital Commons to host conference scholarship did not come to fruition. In spite of this, the increased awareness of the repository helped the library overcome some of the common barriers to faculty buy in. This opportunity led to a relatively rapid period of growth for UTHSC Digital Commons in 2020-2021, compared to pre-Covid growth, resulting in several new collections and increased understanding of the benefits of the IR for the campus.