Purpose -Aims to describe one academic health science center library's experience with expanding reference librarian leadership roles in implementing institutional repository initiatives. Design/methodology/approach -The institutional repository project development phases are briefly documented. The rationale for selecting reference librarians to lead the initiative and resultant role changes is discussed. Findings -Reference librarians are strategically placed to promote and administer institutional repository initiatives successfully. The professional challenge rests in reference librarians' readiness to become scholarly publishing change agents.Practical implications -This case study documents a successful approach to incorporating institutional repository projects into existing library roles in addition to providing new leadership opportunities for reference librarians. Originality/value -Reference librarian roles in institutional repository projects and the evolution of organizational roles are not addressed in the heavily technology-and marketing-based institutional repository literature.

This program evaluation reports on the curricular development and integration of library, biomedical informatics, and scholarly communications (LBS) skills into a required informatics course for a new graduate degree program in the University of New Mexico's Clinical and Translational Sciences Center (CTSC). The course built on the opportunity presented by the new degree program to integrate LBS competencies rarely included in most traditional clinical research training programs. This report tracks the experiences and evaluations of two cohorts of graduate students who have completed the course. This article presents lessons learned on curricular integration and offers thoughts for future work.

Many health sciences librarians as well as other professionals attend conferences on a regular basis. This study sought to link an innovative peer review process of presented research papers to long-term conference outcomes in the peer-reviewed professional journal literature. An evidence-based conference included a proof-of-concept study to gauge the long-term outcomes from research papers presented during the program. Real-time peer review recommendations from the conference were linked to final versions of articles published in the peer-reviewed literature. The real-time peer review feedback served as the basis for further mentoring to guide prospective authors toward publishing their research results. These efforts resulted in the publication of two of the four research papers in the peer-viewed literature. A third presented paper appeared in a blog because the authors wanted to disseminate their findings more quickly than through the journal literature. The presenters of the fourth paper never published their study. Real-time peer review from this study can be adapted to other professional conferences that include presented research papers.

The authors analyze monthly Internet access to traditionally unpublished academic content in one university's institutional repository (IR). Content selected for analysis include materials supplementary to peer-reviewed publications, poster images, graduate course research papers, and presentation slides. The content types represent academic output that would not likely be otherwise collected and made freely available were it not for its availability in an IR. The average first-year access rates per month are similar across content types, and evidence of access persists over time, indicating the value of this content to others and the utility of posting nontraditional academic materials in an institutional repository.

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