Now that the silly season is over, and our academics are finally free of those pesky students, it’s a great time to market the Repository, once again.

I’m setting up meetings with academics from around the University, initially concentrating on the School of Law but also working in a few other corners of the campus. In addition to meeting people myself, I’m also available to support any Information Librarians planning trips over the summer break. I am happy to attend meetings, or to provide refresher training, documentation or tips.

Up until the end of January, I’ll be working full-time on the Repository, based in Library IT. If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to badger me at any time.

In terms of recent work, the biggest innovation this year is the addition of our in-house developed statistics package. The new stats package now enables researchers to find their own work in the Repository, with a breakdown of views and downloads for each paper. Everyone can also see the top 100 authors or items in their department, as well as the top 100 items and authors for the University as a whole. It’s such a simple thing, but the stats module has already proven itself to be a powerful motivator. Make sure you’re familiar with it, as it’s a great aid to getting academics to cough up their research. Links can be found on the Repository itself or on the Intranet page below:

https://intranet.canterbury.ac.nz/library/repository/statistics.shtml

We are currently sitting on 950+ research papers, (1800 in total, counting theses) and it would be excellent to bump that figure up considerably over the next few months, before the hoards descend upon us, once more. In addition to contacting new faces, it is well worth contacting people you’ve already seen, as we’re keen to get people into the habit of submitting their work on an ongoing basis.

Don’t forget that you can also add a Repository RSS feed to a LibGuide page too. See the posting on Counterculture for more details, if that strikes your fancy.

Talk to you all soon –

Grant.