Marketing Approaches and Ideas

You’ll need to try a variety of ways to market DSpace at your institution. Use the ideas and tools we provide here to build awareness and adoption of your DSpace service.

Use a Top-Down Approach

• A top-down approach focuses on provosts, deans, and administrators. Use word-of-mouth and direct influence.
  In this approach, you help create the institution's directive to build a digital repository, spreading the word to faculty and staff.
• Get institutional support by engaging influential faculty and administrators before you launch the service.

Try a Bottom-Up Approach

• A bottom-up approach pitches the service to faculty, staff, communities that publish on your university website, technical staff in departments, and groups dealing with publications, etc.
  In this approach, you prove the need for DSpace before requesting support at a higher level.
• Get faculty interested in preserving their work for the long-term.
• Tap your Faculty Advisory Committee to describe to their colleagues the benefits of using DSpace.
• Recognize that different departments have different cultures around scholarly communications, different digital needs. Your approach needs to take this into account.
• Look for faculty acceptance in a wide range of disciplines, each with different cultures, and different publishing and digital needs.
• Approach faculty who have publications on their department websites.
• Meet the editors, webmasters, and content managers on campus and present DSpace to them. They understand the challenges of online content management and preservation and can be great advocates for DSpace.
• Collaborate with other initiatives on campus for online content, courseware, etc.

Create Some Buzz

• Make a lot of presentations on campus – to communities, departments, individuals, by phone, in person, to staff, academics, IT departments, etc.
• Write a press release announcing the launch and distribute to all campus news outlets including faculty newsletter.
• Coordinate publicity at the department, library, and university level. Share marketing copy, posters, brochures with news office, websites, etc.
• Use brochures (Microsoft Word document), posters, presentations (PowerPoint presentation), and the university website to publicize the service.
• Plan events across campus and within DSpace communities to publicize the launch of your service.
• Schedule a kick-off session for library staff to learn about DSpace, ask questions, and build awareness.
• Build awareness of DSpace before you launch the service by running an Early Adopter Program.
• Do publicity both inside and outside the university. Some faculty notice DSpace articles in the local newspaper and ask for more information.
• Listen to faculty and end-users on campus, and remain flexible in your outlook as you gather requirements.
• Build interest in long-term preservation on campus.

Keep in Touch with Your Communities

• Survey your DSpace communities annually to get feedback, gather new requirements, etc.
• Use an annual form to verify policy decisions.
• Run a Help line so content submitters and managers can reach the DSpace User Support Manager directly.
• Track bugs and enhancement requests and send them to DSpace.org.
• Share FAQs among DSpace communities on campus.

See also the Marketing Lessons Learned from other DSpace teams.