Abstract
The Scholarly Communication Initiatives and Digital Collections departments within the University adapted staff workflows to become student-centered, where workers create digital content for the University’ digital repositories. Each department has a diverse set of needs; Scholarly Communication Initiatives hires students to help with the creation of metadata records, review open access options for sharing each work, and upload items into the institutional repository. Digital Collections relies on students to scan, create metadata, and upload images online that reflect physical holdings in Special Collections and Archives. Utilizing student workers also provides more time for full-time staff to work on higher-level projects and to update, rethink, improve, and streamline existing workflows. Both departments have found that student-centered workflows teach technical and transferable skills while also encouraging students to grow professionally, academically, and socially, setting students up for success beyond graduation. Empowering the whole student and encouraging their personal and collaborative growth thus helps each department to become more efficient and successful in their missions, a triumph that is possible for any library department of an academic institution. While there is a large body of research on student workers in libraries, including on the topics of management and specific functional areas, there is very little research focused on student workers in digital repositories. This article begins to fill this gap and discusses the philosophies and methodologies of both departments’ approaches, as well as the results of implementing student-centered processes for the department and full-time staff.
Highlights
Most of the technical divisions within the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ (UNLV) University Libraries utilizes student employees to complete key tasks related to digital content and repository management
The two departments are in different stages of implementation (Scholarly Communication Initiatives is in the earlier stages while Digital Collections is more established), but both had the same goals of increasing student autonomy and creating formal student roles, freeing up full-time staff to focus on higher level projects and to create more efficient processes
Communication Initiatives and Digital Collections have successfully adapted staff workflows to become student-centered, increasing outputs dramatically and creating advantageous environments where both staff and students benefit from this work exchange
Summary
Most of the technical divisions within the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ (UNLV) University Libraries utilizes student employees to complete key tasks related to digital content and repository management. Student positions handle a range of complex tasks including capturing content with a high-tech camera system, interpreting the department’s metadata application profile to create metadata, and keeping track of inventory and digitization prep for several outsourced projects. These high-level tasks cannot be effectively delegated without clearly communicated job expectations, detailed procedures for each step of the workflow, and the support of a dedicated student supervisor who attends to all aspects of the students’ success
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