Presentation Abstracts

2026 Presentation Abstracts
NOTE: All times Central (CDT)

Pre-conference – April 22-23, 2026

Updated Levels of Digital Preservation
Elizabeth La Beaud, University of Southern Mississippi
April 22, 1:00 p.m., Cook 206Z/Pre-conference Room

In early 2026, the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) released the third revision of the Levels of Digital Preservation (also referred to as the ‘Levels’). The Levels are a tool to assess your digital preservation infrastructure and identify clear next steps to improve your data management and safeguard your digital content. This workshop will introduce the updated Levels, review the changes and functional areas of digital preservation, and lead participants through a self-assessment using the Levels’ matrix and supporting resources.

Digital Accessibility for Institutional Repositories
Jennie Vance, University of Southern Mississippi
John Blair, University of Southern Mississippi
April 22, 3:00 p.m., Cook 206Z/Pre-conference Room

One of the key objectives of institutional repositories is to provide access to scholarly content to everyone, which means that in addition to being open, the content also needs to be accessible. Providing accessible content is essential for ensuring that everyone, including those using assistive technologies, can use our repositories. Join this pre-conference session to discover the core principles of web and document accessibility and why they matter. We will discuss ways to make IR websites and documents more accessible and how to make sure you’re meeting both WCAG and ADA standards. Plus, we’ll walk through several free tools designed to help you audit and improve your site and documents with ease.

Migration Ready: How to Evaluate Systems and Plan a Successful Transition
Elizabeth La Beaud, University of Southern Mississippi
April 23, 9:00 a.m., Cook 206Z/Pre-conference Room

Migrating content management systems (CMS) is a fact of life for digital repositories. Researching options, defining functional requirements, navigating the RFP process, migration planning and implementation, all these phases can quickly feel overwhelming. Join USM’s Head of Library Technology, Elizabeth La Beaud, for a hybrid and interactive workshop on system evaluation, selection, and migration planning. Drawing on examples from her 15+ year career, La Beaud will guide participants through key decision factors, common pitfalls to avoid, and successful strategies for selecting a new platform or hosting service. Whether you are actively preparing for migration or simply planning ahead, this workshop will provide a practical foundation and actionable steps participants can immediately utilize to streamline and support a successful transition.

Workshop – April 23, 2026

Repository-Ready Metadata Under the OSTP 2022 Public Access Memo
Jennifer Beamer, United States Repository Network/SPARC
Carly Robinson, SPARC
2:10 p.m., Cook 206Z/Day 1 Room

This interactive workshop will focus on strengthening institutional repository metadata in light of the 2022 OSTP public access memo. Presenters Carly Robinson and Jennifer Beamer will translate OSTP's expectations and timelines for metadata into concrete repository requirements, drawing on Desirable Characteristics of Digital Publication Repositories and recent US Repository Network discovery-pilot findings. Participants will review real-world records, apply an "OSTP-ready" metadata checklist, and leave with specific, feasible changes to their local schemas, forms, and workflows that support future agency policies and network-scale discovery.

Posters and Lightning Talks – April 23, 2026

Poster: Current Naming Conventions for Institutional Repositories at US Colleges and Universities
Julia Doelling, West Chester University
4:00 p.m., Cook 206Z/Day 1 Room

The first, and often the most daunting, task IR administrators take on when setting up their IR for the first time is answering the question of how it should be named. This is a question that may recur throughout the life of an institution's repository as it is updated and rebranded to remain consistent with the institution's marketing. In making decisions regarding branding and naming for an IR, knowledge of the practices of colleagues in the space is essential. In this poster, I showcase the current data on names and naming conventions used in Institutional Repositories at US colleges and universities in order to pick out trends, common practices, and outliers in the field. I present the most common naming practices and the frequency of their appearance to answer the questions of "just how many 'Digital Commons at ...' are out there?" Or "Is ScholarWorks a more common name in certain regions?" I also pick out smaller trends such as mascot-based names or the collection of acronymic titles and note some true outliers, names that stand alone. By pulling this information into one place, this poster leaves viewers with deeper knowledge of current IR naming conventions, based in the data, in order to help administrators in future renaming or rebranding projects.

Lowering Barriers to Institutional Repositories
Federico Verlicchi, 4Science
4:10 p.m., Cook 206Z/Day 1 Room

Implementing an institutional repository can be challenging for research institutions with limited resources or modest technical capacity. To address this need, 4Science, a DSpace Platinum Service Provider, developed DSpaceWay, a software as a service (SaaS) solution that delivers a fully managed, secure, and turnkey DSpace environment hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Designed for institutions seeking a cost effective yet standards compliant solution, DSpaceWay provides immediate and sustainable access to the global DSpace ecosystem without the burden of infrastructure management, upgrades, or complex metadata configuration.

Delivered under ISO 27001 certified management processes, DSpaceWay ensures data protection, reliability, and scalability in line with best practices for research data management. It includes the latest DSpace enhancements—such as an intuitive user interface, comprehensive usage statistics, and native IIIF support for high quality image visualization. DSpaceWay also offers seamless extensions toward CRIS and GLAM implementations, enabling institutions to expand their repository capabilities as their needs evolve. The proposed talk will demonstrate how, by simplifying deployment while preserving openness and flexibility, DSpaceWay empowers research organizations of any size or budget to focus on sharing and amplifying the impact of their scholarly outputs.

An IR for Preserving Unique Voices and Creativity: A Zine Collection at UDC
Yoko Ferguson, University of the District of Columbia
4:20 p.m., Cook 206Z/Day 1 Room

In an age of digital content, the University of the District of Columbia Library and an English faculty member cohosted physical zine making workshops for a critical writing course, as well as for the university community. Seeing this as a perfect opportunity to leverage (and show off) their institutional repository (JSTOR), the Cataloging and Metadata Librarian created a new open access collection within an IR to preserve and showcase the zines submitted to the library. The IR has allowed the library to serve not only as a repository of knowledge and information, but also as a safe space for unique voice and creative expression. In this session, the presenter will share their workflows and metadata elements, as well as the benefits and challenges of using an IR for zines.

Moving from Vision to Action with the U.S. Repository Network
Jennifer Beamer, United States Repository Network/SPARC
4:30 p.m., Cook 206Z/Day 1 Room

The U.S. Repository Network (USRN) is a growing, community-driven initiative to strengthen repositories as shared research infrastructure across the United States. This past year, the network piloted a discovery effort that aggregated and surfaced article-level content from participating repositories, making locally hosted scholarship more findable and usable at scale. In parallel, the USRN convened community conversations with repository managers, librarians, and other stakeholders to co-design priorities, identify pain points, and ensure that technical work on interoperability and discovery was grounded in real institutional needs and practices.

Open Access Month: Takeaways from an IR Manager's First International Open Access Week
Matthew Folse, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center
4:40 p.m., Cook 206Z/Day 1 Room

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center hosts an Open Access Month which overlaps with International Open Access Week in October. We do outreach events, hosts information sessions, and this year held our first Open Access Lab to answer all questions faculty, graduate students, and other residents or researchers may have about the broader OA Landscape. I have collected statistics to present the knowledge the student body had about different aspects of Open Access or Scholarly Communication as well as some narrative discussion about how faculty and others across our campus navigate this rapidly changing environment. We use these events to also drive engagement with the libraries, educate about the Institutional Repository—LSU Health's Digital Scholar—and build rapport with the LSU Health Community at our New Orleans Campus.

Full Concurrent Sessions – April 24, 2026

A Practical Approach to IR Policy Creation and Revision
Nicole Webber, University of Northern Colorado
8:30 a.m., Cook 209A/Room A

The process of policy development and revision often suffers reduced prioritization, particularly when staffing levels limit dedicated expertise and the time necessary for thorough evaluation. International surveys reveal common tendencies for institutional repository policies to lack desired degrees of comprehensiveness, refinement, or consistency, creating operational uncertainty and inhibiting long-term sustainability. This presentation addresses this pervasive gap, not by offering a case study or example documentation, but by introducing a structured, adaptable framework to guide policy development and maintenance, regardless of institutional size, platform, or maturity.

Drawing on a review of case studies and policy literature, a consolidated, openly licensed set of considerations and decision points was developed to guide repository managers in crafting context-sensitive IR policies. This new resource outlines common policy domains, frequent omissions, and the range of potential approaches, accompanied by illustrative examples. Attendees will leave with a practical tool to support comprehensive, sustainable IR policy creation and the opportunity to contribute to the ongoing development of the resource.

Student Scholarship and Engagement Frameworks Using the University of Toledo Digital Repository as Platform for Student Research
Arjun Sabharwal, University of Toledo
Gerald Natal, University of Toledo
8:30 a.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

As attention turns to promoting student research at universities, institutional repositories (IR) have begun to play increasingly more important roles in the publishing of student posters. As parts of an expansive actor network that engages human and nonhuman actors in sociotechnical processes, engagement frameworks are vital to promoting student research, which results in greater visibility, enhanced reputation, and benefits to accreditation. When successful, such engagement frameworks effectively involve students, faculty, academic departments, libraries, and the communication infrastructure to promote these resources.

The University of Toledo Digital Repository (UTDR) features student scholarship in several academic units and across the disciplines at The University of Toledo. Over the years, student research added to the UTDR has included theses, research papers, posters, and various forms of collaborative research involving faculty. Aside from the viewpoint of scholarship, IRs are seen as tools for student learning. A recent survey was conducted through the University of Toledo Libraries to seek responses from IR managers at R1 institutions in the United States and UToledo faculty. Only a small number of IR managers' responses indicate that IRs are assessed for student learning (about open access and publishing research data in an IR as part of a practicum or internship report) after some training and many faculty had not been aware of the IR's potential to contribute to student learning, but some faculty had indicated that IRs could be used to teach students about digital literacy, open access publishing, and searching digital archives. As the university recently attained the Carnegie Classification of R1, the UTDR's role is likely to expand as a platform to showcase student research from the undergraduate to doctoral levels.

This presentation will address the role of the engagement framework, actor network, survey results, and the extent to which student research was featured in the UTDR.

Institutional Independence and a Sustainable Future for Repositories: The DSpace Approach
Ignace Deroost, Atmire
9:30 a.m., Cook 209A/Room A

In recent years, the repository landscape has been rapidly evolving, driven by economic challenges, emerging technologies, and changing institutional policies. As a result, institutions are increasingly focusing on sustainable solutions that can withstand financial and technological change.

This presentation explores how the open-source DSpace platform, together with Atmire’s service offering, addresses these challenges. In particular, it will discuss:

• Cost management: how institutions can control the costs of running an institutional repository while remaining aligned with library budgets.
• Vendor independence: how to protect against dependence on vendors or ownership structures.
• Adapting to changing needs: how to ensure your repository can evolve to support future requirements that may not yet be known.

Implementing an Institutional Repository Within the Archives: The Challenges Facing Mid-Sized Institutions and Implications for the Future
Kevin Greene, University of Southern Mississippi
Elizabeth La Beaud, University of Southern Mississippi
9:30 a.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

The National Guard’s history spans more than three centuries and includes contributions from all 50 states, three territories, and the District of Columbia. Dating back to 1636, the National Guard holds the honor of the oldest organized units in U.S. miliary history. Yet the documentary record of the Guard is highly dispersed—spread across state archives, national archives, local institutions, armories, and personal collections—making preservation, discovery, and access challenging.

This presentation examines the development of a national digital repository for the Guard through the work of the Center for the Study of the National Guard (CSNG) at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). Designed to serve a geographically distributed community, the repository brings together materials from across all 54 states and territories while providing centralized access for researchers, service members, and the public.

Using this initiative as a case study, the presenters will explore the challenges and opportunities of building a digital repository on a national scale. Topics include coordinating distributed partners, establishing governance and contribution models, developing shared metadata and digitization practices, and building infrastructure that balances local stewardship with centralized discovery. Attendees will gain practical insights and lessons applicable to anyone working to expand the reach and impact of institutional repositories.

What’s New, What’s Next, and What You’ll Soon See in Digital Commons
Christa Johnson-Perkins, Elsevier
10:30 a.m., Cook 209A/Room A

2025 was a strong year for Digital Commons, shaped by ongoing feedback, conversations, and collaboration with our community. Together, we made meaningful progress across key themes including modernization, interoperability, accessibility, and security—focused on improving everyday workflows, strengthening trust in data, and preparing for what’s next. In this session, we’ll briefly reflect on the momentum from 2025 and spend most of our time looking ahead to 2026. We’ll share what’s coming next as we continue modernizing core experiences, exploring new ways to connect Digital Commons with other systems, advancing accessibility across and within the platform, and continuing our work to protect traffic integrity. We’ll close with time for discussion and feedback to help shape what comes next.

Implementing an Institutional Repository Within the Archives: The Challenges Facing Mid-Sized Institutions and Implications for the Future
Emma Powell, Elon University
Jason Smith, Lewis University
10:30 a.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

This session will focus on the tendency of medium-sized colleges and universities to operate their Institutional Repository (IR) and Archives under one department or within a single staff member. This combination is necessary for these institutions due to their more limited budgets and staffing levels; this allows them to still keep up with the offerings of their peers, even as late adopters of IR platforms. In addition, the merging of duties blurs the boundaries between the goals of IRs and Archives, a development that carries larger implications for collection priorities, the role of scholarly communications, and the way in which aspiring librarians/archivists are educated. Two early career librarians/archivists will reflect on their experiences of implementing IRs at their institutions, the balancing of IR work with their responsibilities for the Archives, and the work needed to define separate scopes for each unit.

Figshare and the Future of Repositories: How Figshare is Adapting to the Ever Changing Present to Enhance Institutional Impact
Andrew Mckenna-Foster, Figshare
12:30 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

In an era of increasing federal mandates and the rapid rise of machine learning, the role of the Institutional Repository (IR) is being redefined. It is no longer enough to simply host PDFs; modern repositories must serve as flexible, integrated, and FAIR-compliant ecosystems that elevate an institution’s entire research output.

This session provides an inside look at how Figshare is adapting to meet these ever-changing requirements. We will discuss:

• The Power of Metadata Flexibility: An overview of Figshare’s metadata restructure, which allows institutions to seamlessly manage data, articles, and non-traditional outputs in a single location. This flexibility ensures that the IR can adapt to any discipline's needs without compromising on schema standards.
• Future-Proofing for AI: As the State of Open Data 2025 showed, AI tools are a critical part of research. AI bot harvesting can negatively affect repository performance, but AI driven discovery also depends on the high quality data stored in repositories. We will discuss how AI harvesting affects Figshare and how Figshare’s built-in features facilitate FAIR principles so your institution’s research is not just "online," but is machine-readable and ready to power the next generation of AI insights.
• The Global-Institutional Symbiosis: Figshare’s unique model supports a global community of independent researchers while providing robust, "turn-key" solutions for institutions. We will explore how institutional partners gain enhanced visibility and analytics, showcasing how the repository can move from a compliance requirement to a strategic asset for the University.

Join us to learn how Figshare is building a sustainable, scalable future for institutional repositories, ensuring your researchers' work remains discoverable, citable, and impactful.

Scholarly Commons Updates: Complying with Accessibility Laws at Augusta University
Whitney Russell, Augusta University
12:30 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

In response to evolving accessibility standards and legal requirements, our university library launched a comprehensive project to improve both accessibility and discoverability within the institutional repository. This initiative focused on two critical areas: file remediation and metadata enhancement. To address accessibility barriers, graduate students were engaged to assist with remediating existing files, ensuring compliance with WCAG guidelines, and creating inclusive formats for diverse users. Concurrently, library staff completed metadata remediation, refining descriptive elements and subject headings to optimize searchability and improve resource visibility across platforms. This presentation will discuss the process success, and challenges of this large project over a short period of time.

Short Concurrent Sessions – April 24, 2026

Building Open Education Ecosystems: Integrating OER into Your IR
Yoga Raghavaraju, Elsevier
Danielle De Jager-Loftus, University of South Dakota
1:30 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

Digital Commons offers a natural platform for hosting and sharing Open Educational Resources (OER), promoting open scholarship and reducing costs across campuses. This session will kick off by exploring how DC can serve as a central hub for OER creation, hosting, and access, enabling faculty to easily share, adapt, and discover free and affordable course materials while ensuring long-term preservation and discoverability.

Building on this foundation, Danielle De Jager-Loftus will share her specific experience at the University of South Dakota, a public R2 university, where they launched an OER initiative through campus fellowships and adopted a cohort model to introduce faculty to open textbooks and courseware. While this approach successfully engaged faculty at a small scale, USD identified the need for a centralized, sustainable platform to host and distribute their OER content campus-wide. They are now exploring their institutional repository, RED, as a natural fit for this purpose-creating a shared space managed by the library that fosters collaboration, broadens faculty adoption, and supports digital content co-creation. Join us to learn how DC can support OER initiatives, from strategic hosting to faculty engagement, and hear real-world insights on building momentum for open education across institutions.

Promoting Institutional Repositories on Campus: Strategies to Increase Faculty and Student Participation
Fatimah Jibril Abduldayan, Nigeria Maritime University
Martha Tizhe, Federal University of Technology, Minne
1:30 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

Institutional Repositories (IRs) play a critical role in preserving institutional scholarship and improving research visibility. However, many universities, particularly those without an established IR, face significant challenges in building awareness and encouraging participation among faculty and students. This proposal presents a case study of Nigeria Maritime University (NMU), a university currently exploring the adoption of an institutional repository, with a focus on understanding participation readiness and promotion strategies.

The study adopts a descriptive survey approach using a structured questionnaire to gather data from both students and academic staff across the institution. A total of 250 respondents will be sampled from ten departments across five faculties, comprising 20 students from each department (200 students) and 5 lecturers from each department (50 academic staff). The questionnaire will explore respondents' awareness of institutional repositories, perceptions of open access, willingness to contribute scholarly outputs, and perceived barriers to participation.

Preserving Data Sharing and Compliance for Biomedical Data: Introducing the CHOP Dataverse
Nicole Feldman, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Ene Belleh, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Allison Olson, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Julie Pakstis, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Jennae Luecke, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
2:00 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

In response to the NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy, which took effect in January 2023 requires researchers to plan for and share scientific data generated from NIH-funded research. The Arcus Library Science Team at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) launched a public access repository-CHOP Dataverse, powered by the Harvard Dataverse platform. This initiative aims to promote transparency, reproducibility, funding, journal requirements, and broader reuse of biomedical research data.

The CHOP Dataverse provides a user-friendly, searchable platform with advanced tools for finding data and metadata, web-indexed content for maximum visibility, automatic DOI creation for proper citation and long-term access, and a responsible access workflow through Data Use Agreements. Each dataset is enriched with comprehensive, machine-readable metadata and documentation (such as code, data dictionaries, and README files) to support data discovery, reuse, and reproducibility. All submissions are thoroughly reviewed to ensure the removal of identifiers and adherence to ethical and legal standards. In addition to being publicly accessible, CHOP Dataverse datasets are securely archived within the Arcus platform, as stored indefinitely in geographically distributed, redundant environments on Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.

By publishing data through CHOP Dataverse, researchers can enhance transparency, increase the impact of their work, and fulfill the requirements of funders and journals. The Arcus Library Science Team offers expert guidance throughout the process, ensuring that public data sharing and compliance with funding and journal requirements are easier for researchers.

Joining the 21st Century: The Move to Electronic Theses and Dissertations
David Gaither, Louisiana State University Shreveport
2:00 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

In December 2024, the thesis and dissertation submission process at LSUS finally became fully electronic. Gone were the days of directing students to bring printed pages on specific paper to be sent off by the library for binding while library associates wrestled with dated publisher-specific programs. Now, personal and institutional copies are automatically ordered during ETD submission, and after they are delivered to ProQuest, electronic copies are automatically deposited in our Institutional Repository. This presentation will be a short session of 15-20 minutes, leaving 5-10 minutes for questions, that will cover the transition from print to electronic submission, what it's looked like over the past year, and how easily it can be to set up automatic deposit into a DSpace Repository.

The presentation will discuss how findings will inform targeted awareness strategies, including library-led sensitisation programmes, departmental engagement, and the integration of IR advocacy into research training and undergraduate seminars. By sharing insights from a pre-implementation context, this session will offer practical guidance for institutions seeking to promote participation, build readiness, and foster a culture of open scholarship even before an IR is fully deployed.

Popping the Berry Bubble: Using AIM Quartex to Promote Scholarship and Creative Works Beyond Campus
Jessica Hornbuckle, Berry College
2:30 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

Berry College, a small liberal arts institution in Northwest Georgia, recently launched its institutional repository (IR) to enhance access to student and faculty scholarship. Beginning with a student-centered approach, we prioritized collecting Honors Theses and Symposium on Student Scholarship posters. Early promotion to stakeholders sparked faculty interest, accelerating our timeline to include locally created open educational resources. Since launch, the IR has increased visibility for student research and fostered faculty engagement. Learn about the implementation of the IR using AM Quartex and future plans to expand collections to include faculty publications, develop outreach strategies to support broader adoption of the IR across disciplines, and drive off-campus traffic to the site.

Communicating Accessibility to Partners: Developing a Web Accessibility Communication Toolkit for Editors of Journals and Administrators of ETD Series
Julia Doelling, West Chester University
2:30 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

The new web accessibility requirements under ADA guidelines has prompted a recent large effort to make institutional repositories accessible at many institutions throughout the US. In order to meet the ADA guidelines, the administrator of the IR at West Chester University (WCU), like those at many institutions, has found herself developing and overseeing the implementation of a plan for accessibility on the site. This includes planning for continued and future accessibility of both the platform and contents for series' and journals managed by campus partners. At WCU the IR administrator partners and liaises with several individuals and offices on campus who are responsible for the administration of series' or journals hosted on the site, including the ETD series.

In order to ensure the compliance of these series and journals while respecting the time of partners, who juggle many responsibilities and lack robust technical knowledge of the IR platform, the IR administrator at WCU developed an accessibility toolkit for IR partners. This lightning talk presents the process for developing this toolkit in collaboration with relevant campus partners, the methods of its communication, and the results of its implementation, as well as the anticipated results as the journals and ETD series increase their publication in the summer and fall months. This presentation is intended as a case study documenting successes and room for improvement in building communication plans for campus partners active in IRs, with accessibility as a relevant example.

Do Change Horses in Midstream: Navigating the Migration to InvenioRDM
Aaron McCullough, Paradigm Publishing Services
3:00 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

In 2019, the team at Paradigm Repositories (formerly Ubiquity Press) launched a hosted solution built on the Hyku/Samvera architecture. By 2026, the landscape of scholarly communication shifted, demanding more flexibility and robustness. This led to a pivotal decision: migrating our entire customer base to the CERN-developed InvenioRDM platform. This session provides a "behind-the-scenes" look at that transition. We will discuss the strategic reasons for the move, the technical hurdles of "changing horses" midstream, and how InvenioRDM addresses modern repository needs. Attendees will see a demonstration of key features—from streamlined workflows to advanced metadata management—that make InvenioRDM a powerful contender for the future of institutional repositories.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the technical and strategic drivers behind a platform migration.
• Identify key features of InvenioRDM that differentiate it from other open-source solutions.
• Evaluate the risks and rewards of switching repository "engines" in a production environment.

Vibe Coding with AI to Clean Messy IR Metadata
Challen Wright, University of Nevada, Reno
3:00 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

"Vibe coding" is a relatively new term to describe the process of using AI to generate scripts. The user is focused on the "vibe" and output of the code, rather than the syntax itself. This approach enables users with minimal coding experience to create custom scripts for their projects. In this lightning talk, the author will share their experiences with vibe coding to clean up IR metadata. They will share their process working with Claude AI to write Python scripts and how these scripts were integrated into the metadata cleanup workflow.

Revolutionizing Institutional Repositories with TDNet DataSphere: AI-Enhanced Management, Discovery, and Accessibility
Paul Cuomo, TDNet
3:30 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

In this 30-minute presentation, explore how TDNet DataSphere empowers libraries and institutions to centralize, curate, and showcase diverse digital assets—from scholarly research and datasets to multimedia and internal reports—in a flexible, AI-driven repository platform. Attendees will learn about key features like seamless integration with existing systems, customizable branding for Open Access repositories, and AI-powered discovery tools that streamline workflows, boost visibility, and ensure compliance with accessibility standards. Drawing on real-world case studies from various settings, this session will demonstrate practical strategies for optimizing resource utilization, enhancing user engagement, and transforming knowledge management in institutions of all sizes. Ideal for IR managers, librarians, and administrators seeking cost-effective solutions to modernize their digital ecosystems.

ETDs: Building in Accessibility
Elizabeth Holt, LSU Health Sciences Center
3:30 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

The countless research papers published by students and faculty at federally funded medical institutions present a welcome opportunity to include accessibility compliance instruction in Library programming. However, with multiple schools, disciplines, and departments, it can be difficult to know if the communities that would benefit most from this instruction are aware it is offered, or are even aware of how ADA compliance may pertain to them. With this in mind, the LSU Health New Orleans School of Graduate Studies and its library liaison, who is also the IR manager, collaborated on a pilot project to bring accessibility compliance instruction to the graduating cohort. This project involved updating the electronic dissertation template for accessibility compliance, polling the student body to evaluate interest and needs, engaging the cohort and interested faculty remotely, and then having in-person workshops with the librarian to complete instruction and ensure understanding. The goal of the project is to increase accessibility awareness among future health care professionals, help bring the institution to compliance before mandated deadlines, establish workflows for future cohorts, and ease the burden of remediation on any parties that responsibility may have fallen on. This presentation will share the processes and results of this project.

Revitalizing an Aging Repository: Bringing New Life to TRACE
Ashley Cate, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
4:00 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

I accepted the position of Publishing & Open Repository Administrator at the University of Tennessee in November 2024. At that time, TRACE (the acronym for UTK's institutional repository) was largely being run on an as needed basis by a graduate student and no one had been doing significant work on the repository for the last couple of years, other than answering patron questions and assisting with patron needs as they arose.

When I began my role as Publishing & Open Repository Administrator I had to do significant work to update collection titles, collection descriptions, update submission links, update sidebar links and page description links, as well as plan for a migration to a platform that was already chosen before I came into this position. We are currently working to migrate from Digital Commons to DSpace (for our IR), Vireo for our ETD submissions, and to a more robust journal publishing platform (that I cannot name yet because we do not have a signed contract but by the time this presentation happens, I will be able to name). I will talk about this process and what steps went into the migration process, as well as discuss how the migration went (or has gone if everything is not fully migrated).

I will also talk about the needs of our IR and journal publishing platform. There were very few written out policies on submission and withdrawal guidelines, we had no formal deposit license agreement for the IR, or a collections policy. I have also worked on writing a journal hosting agreement because we did not previously have one and am working with the Graduate School to address the upcoming ADA Title II regulations. This talk will go over what has worked for us, what has not worked, what still needs to be done, and plans for the future.

Are You Lost? Developing a MAP (Metadata Application Profile) for Your Institutional Repository
Connor Murphy, Utah State University
David Advent, Utah State University
4:00 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

Utah State University (USU) Libraries has recently created a Metadata Application Profile (MAP) to successfully map and crosswalk metadata fields in Digital Commons to Dublin Core and DataCite. We created this MAP to help authors and librarians better understand our records in Digital Commons; this MAP ensures consistency and readability with other Institutional Repositories. In this presentation, we will cover our process for creating a MAP, the relevant context for creating a MAP, and how we plan to implement this MAP to remediate metadata and increase accessibility of our materials.

Preserving Digital Collections with Fedora: An Open Source Approach
Arran Griffith, Fedora
4:30 p.m., Cook 209A/Room A

Fedora is a robust, open-source digital repository platform focused on long-term preservation best practices, and designed with flexibility at its core. Used by a wide range of institutions from around the world, it is an ideal choice for anyone with diverse, complex, digital collections. From institutional repositories preserving diverse digital content, to cultural heritage archives safeguarding artifacts in highly structured, yet flexible ways, Fedora's adaptable architecture supports a wide range of use cases.

This presentation will explore Fedora's flexible architecture and how it is used to support a wide range of implementation and data models. Presenters will explore how Fedora's support for preservation best practices (including fixity checking, content versioning, and the Oxford Common File Layout) make it an ideal choice for institutions seeking to safeguard their digital assets long term. Attendees will learn how Fedora is used around the world to manage and preserve everything from research thesis and dissertations, to research datasets and digitized historical records. We will explore how Fedora's modular, standards-driven approach can help ensure your digital collections remain accessible and trustworthy into the future.

Finally, we will discuss current and future development plans for the software and how to get involved in the vibrant community of users.

Rebranding a 16-Year-Old Institutional Repository: A Case Study
Michelle Shannon, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Betsua Garcia-Trujillo, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
4:30 p.m., Cook 206Z/Room B

In 2025, a small repository team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries rebranded their 16-year old institutional repository (IR). The rebrand included a new name, URL, web design, marketing materials, submission process, and a launch event. It also included unique successes and challenges due to being hosted by Digital Commons. This presentation will present a case study on how to successfully structure a rebranding project like this, keep track of all the moving parts, and launch a "new" IR to the university. It will also discuss the impact of rebranding on engagement and outreach efforts.