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1 Repository, 26 Campuses, 10 Years: Strength (and Chaos) in Numbers

Karlin, Jojo; Cirasella, Jill

Publisher
Zenodo
DOI
10.5281/zenodo.17941742
Repository
zenodo.org
Language
en

Abstract

In the ten years since its inception, the CUNY Academic Works repository has grown to house and provide public access to more than 33,000 scholarly, pedagogical, and creative works by affiliates of the City University of New York, the largest urban public university in the United States. Representing all 26 CUNY campuses — community colleges, four-year colleges, and graduate/professional schools, with legacies as old as 1847 (The City College of New York) and as young as 2018 (CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies) — CUNY Academic Works has flourished thanks in large part to a system that combines central administration with local expertise. CUNY’s Office of Library Services handles the central administration, which includes standardizing practices, developing documentation, and fielding a steady stream of platform and policy questions, while campus-based repository administrators perform outreach tailored to their campus communities, build relationships with authors and offices, review submissions to their local collections, etc. This model is easy to explain but difficult to enact: It requires a hierarchy of well-defined repository roles, an approach to policy that’s both flexible and firm, a culture of information-sharing, an appreciation that most repository administrators have only a few hours (if even that!) to devote to the repository each week, and a sense of humor about surprising problems and strong personalities. In our presentation, we will share the story of building and maintaining CUNY Academic Works — both the repository itself and the associated infrastructure of people, policies, and services — to benefit the whole university community.

Full text

1 Repository, 26 Campuses, 10 Years: Strength (and Chaos) in Numbers Jojo Karlin, Scholarly Communications Manager CUNY Office of Library Services Jill Cirasella, Scholarly Communications Librarian & University Liaison CUNY Graduate Center Northeast Institutional Repository Day 2025 Click to edit Master title style • The Context (We’re Complicated!) • The Policy & Structure (Strength!) • The Practice (Chaos!) Presentation Overview The Context (We’re Complicated!) Click to edit Master title style CUNY by the Numbers: •Campuses: 26 colleges (senior, community, honors, post-graduate, and professional colleges) located across all five boroughs of New York City. •Students: 237,671 total enrollment (2024); 46,075 degrees granted (2023-24) •Faculty & Staff: 40,040 total (13,727 full-time faculty, 14,682 part-time) •Libraries: 31 locations across the city; different organizational positions! The City University of New York We are here. Click to edit Master title style One open access advocate joined a committee… → UFS Libraries & Information Technology Committee (2009) → Full University Faculty Senate resolution (2011) Resolutions need to be acted on! → Open Access Advisory Group (2012) → Made recommendations for education about OA, creation of an IR, staffing, etc. University Faculty Senate Click to edit Master title style A Repository (and More) Is Born Launched in 2015, CUNY Academic Works is… • CUNY’s institutional repository • Associated policies and legal infrastructure • Robust assistance for authors, centers, etc. • Hierarchy of well-defined staff roles The Policy & Structure (Strength!) Click to edit Master title style • Research and Publishing Strategy department • Scholarly Communications Manager • 1 non-teaching adjunct, 2 GSLIS Fellows • OLS Institutional Repository Working Group (more to come!) • Digital Commons Central Office of Library Services Click to edit Master title style How does access to this work benefit you? ★“This openness assisted me in genealogy work associated with early New Netherland (NY). I was able to see a mention in a thesis of my ancestor in translated 17th century Dutch docs.” ★“I was reading Cole Arthur Riley’s ‘Black Liturgies’ and on page 107 this work is mentioned. Thank you for making it accessible for all of us.” ★“As a high school science teacher, I am constantly looking for good worksheets for my students. I think this worksheet on Ions is very helpful.” Readers Say Thank You! (cont’d) ✏ The Practice (Chaos!) Click to edit Master title style • Understaffing of libraries → heavy coordinator workloads • Personalities! • Increasingly, anxieties about the IR as source for AI training • Everything everywhere all in flux (campuses, libraries, priorities, staffing, coordinators’ other assigned duties, etc.) Challenges for Campuses Click to edit Master title style • Office of Library Services leadership turnover (7 deans since IR founding) • Office of Library Services organization changes (the dean has reported to at least 4 different entities) • Interims everywhere (Interim Executive Vice Chancellor, Interim Vice Chancellor, Interim Dean, and many many Interim Chief Librarians) • One university, many (deeply entrenched) campus cultures Challenges for Admin Click to edit Master title style • New partners Office of Research Wikimedian-in-Residence • New faculty Faculty Fellowship Publication Program • New students Undergrad research • CUNY’s mission, always and forever! Opportunities Questions? Let’s Chat! Jojo Karlin, Scholarly Communications Manager CUNY Office of Library Services Jill Cirasella, Scholarly Communications Librarian & University Liaison CUNY Graduate Center