Unheard Voices: Institutional Repository End-Users

Beth St. Jean is a doctoral candidate, Soo Young Rieh and Elizabeth Yakel are Associate Professors, and Karen Markey is a Professor in the School of Information at University of Michigan; e-mail: bstjean@umich. edu, [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected], respectively. Support for the MIRACLE (Making Institutional Repositories A Collaborative Learning Environment) Project (http://miracle.si.umich. edu) is provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through its National Leadership Grant Program (LG-06-05-0126-05). We would like to thank the IR managers and staff members who assisted us in our recruitment efforts, as well as the twenty end-users who participated in this study. We also wish to thank Raya Samet and Jihyun Kim for their assistance in conducting and coding interviews. © Beth St. Jean, Soo Young Rieh, Elizabeth Yakel, and Karen Markey This exploratory study investigates the perceptions and experiences of a group of institutional repository (IR) stakeholders seldom heard from: end-users. We interviewed twenty IR end-users recruited through five IRs to discover how they characterize the IR, how/why they use the IR, their credibility judgments in relation to the IR, and their willingness to return to and/or recommend the IR. Despite our small sample size, we were able to ascertain that IR end-users, although not yet loyal IR devotees, recognize their value and unique nature. Our findings also revealed several areas for improvement, such as lack of visibility and transparency.