Creative Solutions to Staffing Challenges: Distributed Workflows

Sarah Titus, Librarian for Archives and Special Collections at Saint Norbert College, successfully runs Digital Commons @ St. Norbert College with a total staff time of ⅔ FTE by distributing the workload. In her webinar, “It Takes a Village: IR Management Distributed Across the Campus,” Sarah shares how she has enrolled partners across campus in an advisory group that includes the library, the Communications Office, and the Center for Norbertine Studies.

By delegating certain collections to groups including the Art Department and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, she saves valuable time and finds that outside partners feel a greater sense of ownership over IR collections. This project management approach also lets the library decide which strategic collections to prioritize. Resulting collections are diverse, representing campus strengths and interests which, in turn, promotes engagement in the IR.

In a related staffing webinar entitled “Me, Myself, and I: One IR Manager,” Michael Pujals of Dominican University of California shares how building connections with faculty and staff allows him to juggle repository management on his own. Learn more about how Michael has successfully enrolled partners across campus here.

For more creative ideas on meeting staffing challenges, check out our one-page flyer on “Staffing an Institutional Repository with Limited Resources.”