Jerome, Erin

Job Title

Library Publishing and Institutional Repository Librarian

Last Name

Jerome

First Name

Erin

Discipline

Musicology
Scholarly Communication

Expertise

ETDs, institutional repositories, open access, Joseph Haydn

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Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 32

Open Access
Full Schedule for 2017 Open Access Week events at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
(2017-10-23) Jerome, Erin
The UMass Amherst Libraries will host a series of events as part of Open Access Week 2017 pertaining to copyright and fair use, open access, electronic theses and dissertations, open technologies, and open data.
Open Access
Fostering Connections: Creating an IR Managers Forum
(2017) Andrews, Pamela; Jerome, Erin; Shorey, Christy; Dabrowski, Anna
Sometimes it’s difficult to find answers for work related questions. This can be compounded when one lacks the means to engage with a community of peers who face similar situations and problems. As institutional repository managers, we found ourselves in this situation: with access to resources and listservs that didn’t quite fit our needs. Available resources were either a) too general in scope, drowning out a discussion of repository-specific concerns, b) too narrowly focused on platform specific issues or c) too technically oriented toward the details of software functionality and setup. Instead of remaining siloed, or reaching out to a few individuals in our network, we decided to engage our colleagues by creating a discussion space for institutional repository managers. The IR Manager Forum is designed to foster information sharing among institutional repository managers, regardless of software platform, institutional setting, or technical expertise. It uses Google Groups as a platform. Members can post and view threaded messages. Messages are accessible through the website, and members can also receive and respond to posts by email. These conversations have the potential to help individual managers develop their repository policies, outreach, workflows, and best practices. They can also aid in cross-platform comparisons to identify software features and limitations, larger trends in institutional repositories, areas for improvement, and future directions. Within the first 24 hours of launching the IR Managers Forum, we reached over 100 members from institutions across the US and Canada, and from Africa, Western Europe, and the Middle East. These members include staff and faculty, with various levels of supervision and administration of their IR. In this presentation, we’ll discuss the why and how of creating the IR Managers Forum, lessons learned along the way, as well as the outcomes we anticipate.
Open Access
Envisioning the Future of a Mature IR: A Midlife Assessment of ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
(2023) Jerome, Erin; Atwood, Thea P; Radik, Melanie; Seifried, Rebecca M.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries launched its institutional repository (IR), ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst, in July 2006. To date, the IR has over 57,000 works that have been downloaded over 25 million times all over the world. Over the past six years, the content of the IR has expanded from mainly postprints and Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) to include podcasts, datasets, open educational resources (OER), and other shareable open content that has no other logical home. As continued growth has pushed the limits of the software as designed, we decided to conduct a full assessment of the IR in order to qualitatively assess whether the IR meets the needs of staff and stakeholders. The assessment involved two parts: (1) evaluating the IR according to a set of defined criteria adapted from the University of Pennsylvania’s Platform Functionality Review, and (2) soliciting feedback from stakeholders, including those who edit journals or organize conferences (a functionality that is separate from other parts of the IR) and those who manage non-journal or conference collections within the IR. While stakeholders expressed satisfaction with the service provided by the Libraries and the IR provider, they also requested additional features that would make the platform more user-friendly, flexible, and responsive to new content types and customizations that extend beyond the hard limits of the software. Editors and collections administrators were particularly vocal in requesting additional features, such as the ability to accommodate languages other than English and support for big datasets. The assessment raises concerns about the current IR’s ability to adapt to changes in the scholarly publishing landscape that are on the horizon and provides critical data to inform the next iteration of the repository. Hopefully, others can apply this strategy to their own institutional repository in order to better prepare for a flexible, robust future that supports open scholarship.
Open Access
Making Migration Less Mysterious: Developing a Migration Plan for ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
(2023) Jerome, Erin
In January 2023, after years of environmental scans, interviews with stakeholders and other IR managers, and platform investigations and pilots, the UMass Amherst Libraries made the decision to migrate its IR from bepress' Digital Commons to a combination of Janeway and Atmire-hosted DSpace 7.x. We all love a good migration presentation, but for most of us, migration remains a mysterious process that's difficult to envision. In this talk, I will walk through my process of creating a migration plan for our rather large and unwieldy IR -- from interviews with IR managers who have been through migration, the beginning stages of data cleanup and standardization, and the fun -- Excel column limits! Items uploaded multiple times!--discoveries made along the way. I will also discuss how the cleanup and discoveries are shaping our IR policies moving forward.
Open Access
A Dream of Spring: Creation of an IR Managers Forum
(2018) Shorey, Christy L. M.; Dabrowski, Anna J.; Andrews, Pamela; Jerome, Erin
Sometimes it’s hard to find answers for work‐related questions. This difficulty is compounded when one lacks the means to engage with a community of peers who face similar situations and problems. As institutional repository (IR) managers, we found ourselves with access to resources and listservs that didn’t quite fit our needs. Available discussion spaces were either too general in scope, drowning out repository‐specific concerns; or too narrowly focused on platform‐specific issues and technical details. Lacking an appropriate forum, we decided to create a discussion space for IR managers. The IR Manager Forum (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/irmanagers) is designed to foster a community of practice for reposi- tory managers, regardless of software implementation, institutional setting, or technical expertise. Using the Goo- gle Groups platform, members can post and view threaded messages in an online interface or by e‐mail. Conversations in this space have the potential to help IR managers develop their repository policies and local practices. The authors hope that the forum will also support cross‐platform comparisons to identify useful fea- tures and limitations of various software, areas for practical improvement, and larger trends in institutional repos- itories that speak to their future direction. This paper covers how IR managers from the University of Florida, University of North Texas, Texas A&M University, and University of Massachusetts Amherst created the IR Man- agers Forum. It also gives an overview of the forum’s usage and growth over the first year and a half, and lessons learned along the way.
Open Access
ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst: FY22 Annual Report
(2022-01-01) Jerome, Erin
Open Access
NIRDs Unite: Building a Community of Institutional Repository Practitioners in the Northeast
(2019) Castro, Eleni; Jerome, Erin; Lukens, Colin; Macdonald, Mikki Simon; Palmer, Lisa A.
The idea for “Northeast Institutional Repository Day” (NIRD) was conceived by a group of five repository librarians in the northeast. The organizers sent out a pre-conference online survey to the IR community in November 2018 to see if fellow repository practitioners had an interest in attending and/or participating in such a day and the response was a resounding, “Yes!” The survey results suggested that building a stronger regional network of repository managers would foster meaningful discussions on the merits and effectiveness of IRs.
Open Access
Open Access and Copyright for Theses and Dissertations
(2016-10-26) Jerome, Erin
What is the benefit for choosing open access for your dissertation or thesis? How can your copyright choices help or hurt your scholarship? In this workshop, an overview of open access, copyright, and fair use as it relates to your thesis or dissertation will be presented. We will also allow for plenty of time to discuss your thoughts and questions about these issues.
Open Access
So You Want to Create a Data Repository and your Institution Already (Kind of?) Has One...
(2020) Jerome, Erin
Open Access
ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst: FY19 Annual Report
(2019) Jerome, Erin