Aside from the important work of developing and implementing good open access policy and cultivating the practices of the few keystrokes needed for self-archiving, I would like to suggest that one small step that many institutions with a less-than-full IR might want to consider to advance the cause. That is, please make sure that people can find your IR within a reasonable amount of time.
When pointing scholars to their IRs and encouraging them to deposit, I try using their library's website as a first step - to see what local scholars will see when they try to do this themselves. Even for someone like me who knows a fair bit about IRs and how libraries organize their websites, sometimes it takes me quite a while to find an IR, even when I know the institution has one! May I suggest a quick usability test: find someone (or a few people) who haven't used the IR, and ask them to look for it (you could use a verbal protocol method). Time this. If it takes on average more than 5 minutes for a new user to figure out if your library has an IR, then here is something that should be quick and easy to do to raise your IR's profile and increase your chances of attracting good content. best, Heather G. Morrison _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
