This paper presented as part of the session "Infrastructures of Maintenance: Animals, Regulations and Expertise" at the Society for the History of Technology annual meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
Scholar@UC - scholar.uc.edu - is the faculty self-submission repository currently in development at the University of Cincinnati (UC). Using the Hydra framework, this system comes in an environment of dramatic change: new partnerships across campus and with other entities, new engagement with faculty and stakeholders, growing needs for internal staff job development, and development of new researcher services. The UC Libraries is lean on staffing in comparison with its peers, so we face unique challenges that require flexibility and creativity. We embrace both nimble processes and a strong sense of risk-taking, to ensure that Scholar@UC becomes a critical enterprise system. This panel reflects on three aspects of our engagement and development efforts. First, we will discuss outreach efforts to bring together a small set of “early adopter” faculty, and the process of assembling feedback in a personalized, interview-based setting. Then, we will discuss the process to transform this feedback into functional use cases that prioritize needs and desires. Finally, we will discuss building a small and high-functioning software development team, and collaboration with UC’s central IT department and other local/national development efforts. We think this presentation will offer insight for other institutions with ambitious agendas and limited means.