Exploratory Research Regarding Faculty Attitudes towards the Institutional Repository and Self Archiving

Abstract

Over the past year the Library of the TEI of Athens has launched an Institutional Repository containing Faculty's published and unpublished work, students’ theses and a major collection called “Institutional Archives”. The latter was also used as a vehicle for promoting the Repository and had attracted a lot of interest from all faculty members and the Institute's administration. While in the making, special effort was made to secure faculty's understanding of the undertaking and faculty's participation. Information was communicated through e- letters from the Library, the Deans and the Institute's President as well. A web site was developed and a feedback mechanism was set in place. A system of approaching individually each faculty member and create customized lists of publications to be incorporated in the IR had given surprisingly good results. The assessment of these measures in relation to faculty's willingness to participate in the IR is examined. Furthermore, faculty's attitude towards self-archiving is also examined. A bibliographic review was carried out regarding faculty attitudes and factors that shape it. A questionnaire was distributed to all faculty members in order to assess the effectiveness of the communication system and the degree of their willingness to practice self archiving. This explored faculty reactions and determined the effectiveness of the IR.Major findings include the faculty's positive reception of the IR due to the fact that the information was communicated properly through the aforementioned mechanism and their enthusiasm and overcoming of hesitations after understanding the capabilities of the IR.