Patron Driven IR Development

In August 2011 the Simon Fraser University Library launched a new IR, Summit, based on the open source Drupal content management system. Prior to this, IR Services had been very low profile due to the perceived lack of flexibility of the current IR platform, lack of extensive Java programming skills and our inability to accommodate enhancement requests from faculty.Moving to Drupal allows the SFU Library to take advantage of the global pool of Drupal developers and our in-house Drupal expertise. For example, only three modules were written from scratch while the other seven required modules were modified ones already developed by Drupal developers. As a consequence of this change of platform, we now have a dynamic and flexible platform that allows us to collaborate with faculty on enhancements to develop more responsive IR services. Faculty requests for enhancements drive IR development: examples include small tweeks like adding required HTML metadata headers to ensure indexing by Google Scholar and export of records to Zotero bibliographic software; modifications of author pages; giving users the ability to version documents; restricted collections for purposes of document sharing and pre-publication work; record display enhancements; search result enhancements; ongoing development of ways to synch collection content in the IR with departmental websites. These enhancements help to bring in new users.As well, the SFU Library’s new Scholarly Digitization Fund, where the Library pays for digitization of faculty research, has brought in non-traditional IR users; provided a further opportunity to promote OA; and broadened the Library’s scope of what belongs in an IR.