Building a Trustworthy System: Resources, Policies, and Management Structures—Understanding Our Trustworthiness

Abstract

In 2014, the University of Minnesota Libraries completed a year-long process of upgrading the underlying technology and reviewing the supporting policies, procedures, and resources of our intuitional repository, the University Digital Conservancy. Employing an iterative approach to managing, the technology migration and policy review proved to be an efficient method to effectively deal with challenges and new opportunities as part of the overall process. The results are a repository system built upon the foundations of the professional standards set by our peers and the trust of the university community in the University Libraries. The migration process proved to serve as a type of self-assessment allowing us to evaluate our repository in a way that we had not done before. The resulting outcomes to the Digital Conservancy program include the ability to remain current with our technological offerings, to be agile in our responses to new demands from our community, and to be more transparent in our daily activities in an effort to be a more trustworthy system.