Michael Bell
Assistant Dean for Information Technology
University of Rochester
Institutional repositories (IRs) should be purpose-built to meet user needs. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the University of Rochester invested three years of user research and software development into this vision. The program’s goals were to make the repository easy to use, to provide related services to engage users in the initial stages of their research and writing process, and to make it as seamless as possible for researchers to then submit the finished product to the repository, so they will do it voluntarily. Rochester has migrated from DSpace to IR+ and will announce the open-source availability of IR+ version 1.0. This briefing will demonstrate the IR+ software and show how user-centered design led to a product designed to generate participation regardless of open-access mandates.