Innkeeper at the Roach Motel

Salo, Dorothea. (2008). Innkeeper at the Roach Motel. Library Trends. 57(2): 98-123. Retrieved from: http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/content/crossref/journals/library_trends/v057/57.2.salo.html


Most of the articles we have read have largely focused on the wonderful possibilities of cyberinfrastructure and the attempts done so far to ease the transition from a largely analog world to a digital ruled environment. I have always been curious to know whether there were any dissenting opinions. Thanks to our class's Zotero account, I found Dorothea Salo's article "Innkeeper at the Roach Motel." It is certainly a dissenting voice amongst all the rosy and golden articles we've read this semester.* In fact, Salo compares institutional repositories to roach motels because according to her "whatever goes in there never comes out."

*Not that the golden and rosy articles are off the mark. Many of them are written very carefully and throuroughly, but Salo's article is so wary about the success of IR and open access that it made my eyes bug out.

Salo starts off bluntly: institutional repositories (IR) are not thriving, not catching on with libraries and university faculty in the way is needed for any kind of information transformation. Salo points out that the way people respond to the idea of an IR in their library has been of trepidition and negativity, citing a lack of trust and sdoubts of its credibility as major factors. She also states that initially, the idea of open access is appealing, but in the long run, it is not a major selling point for potential IR users.

Salo echoes many of the oft-discussed challenges of open access: issues of credibility, how to benefit from it monetarily and the general attitude that scholars have in regard to tenure and achieving academic fame. She states that, as wonderful as open access may sound, old habits take a long time to die and it may be a while before open access can catch on in the academic world.

Salo lists several factors that have led to IR's inability to revolutionize scholarly communication as promised and explains in detail of the inconsistencies and inefficiecies. IR and cyberinfrastructure requires participation from several groups: scholars/university faculty that submit work for IRs to collect, librarians or other staff members to manage and campaign the IR efforts, and the software developers to create and upkeep the technology required to run the IR.

The scholars and the university faculty members present a large barrier in the IR effort because not only do they not trust the credibility or status quo of submitting work in open access journals , but in general there is a distrust of any source digital as it is essentially contradictory to the tenure process. Also, in the area e-publishing with all its "pre-prints" and so on, not many people are familiar with the process and are not willing to educate themselves in this area. Librarians and other staff members that would be involved with the IR also display an open lack of trust of such a system and are reluctant to engage with it.

To put it bluntly, Salo calls IR "parasitic on existing research" because what they offer to people is not useful for them and what would be useful is not offered, because the program developers of IR technology is not collaborating with university staff and libraries. Essentially, everyone is in their little corner grousing about how this system with great potential is not working and ignoring the fact that if they collaborated, a newer and more useful system could emerge.

Salo examines different models that libraries have adopted in an attempt to create, manage and run an IR, lists their responsibilties and judges the advantages and disadvantages of each model. A IR manager is new area of expertise and there really no community of practice developed for this area of librarianship yet.

"Maverick Manager": librarian specifically in charge of the IR, has many different responsibilities and skills, but has no real place in the library's organizational structure. The maverick manager has freedom to experiment, but very little to no resources. These types of IR manager models have a large turnover due to lack of community, status and funds to do their job.

"No Accountability" Model: the IR is built by IT or an outside source is contracted to build an IR. Responsibilities are dispersed amongst the librarians for promoting and collecting the IR sources. This system is advantageous because it reduces the amount of groundwork that libraries have to do in order to create the IR, but this model also provides countless chances for miscommunication and requires librarians to travel a steep learning curve in getting familiar with the software.

"Consortial" Model: libraries share IR. This system is efficient, yet increases trouble with outreach, tech support, and content development.

Cooperative Model: this modle has been the most successful by far. Usually the IR is launched by a university administrator rather than a librarian. The librarians mediate content deposits, perform active searches through the Net and other sources for content to put in the IR and sometimes an automated workflow will automatically deposit work in the IR. The biggest problem with this system is that it is very expensive.

Salo ends this article with solutions that would increase the appeal of IRs and ensure a more positive rapport with IRs. First of all, support needs to be shown at home, libraries, library school programs, library organizations. IRs must be integrated into other library programs and priorities. IRs must take an active role in searching for content and be sensitive to faculty needs, digitize analog content, and develop relationships with software developers.

Dorothea Salo's article presents a different view on the whole idea of IR and outlines some of the challenges that prevent IRs from being truly successful. I think this answers a lot of my questions as to why I haven't heard more about IR until I started the Information Science program.