This morning I delivered a short presentation to about 15 HLSS staff on the benefits of using an institutional repository. You can see the slides here (thanks to Joss Winn whose slides on Open Access formed the basis of this presentation).

Bev Jones and Jill Partridge, the library cataloguers, then took on the far more difficult task of guiding everyone through the process of depositing an item. This is acutally not as complicated nor as time consuming as it appears initially, but varying publisher policies don’t make it any easier…

I think the morning went reasonably well – most people managed to deposit a paper and there seemed to be a general understanding of the benefits of using a repository. Clearly the time factor is the biggest consideration for academics who don’t yet use the repository as part of their regular workflow. However, depositing items can actually save time in the long run by automatically updating your personal webpage and giving you a structured, permanent store for all your research papers and other teaching/learning materials.