While supporting the NOAA Central Library, LAC Federal’s Systems Librarian and Digital Project Librarian led the development of the first ever NOAA Institutional Repository (IR). Working with agency IT staff, LAC staff responded to a call to make federally funded research more accessible. Staff reviewed and trialed potential digital asset management solutions and selected Fedora Commons, an open source solution. LAC staff were responsible for developing the information architecture, custom ingestion workflows, interfaces, forms, metadata schema and crosswalks, and submission guidelines. The completed repository serves as a centralized location to store and retrieve NOAA internal publications (technical memoranda, reports, atlases) and NOAA authored and/or funded journal articles and manuscripts. The IR expanded the reach and impact of NOAA research, increasing agency visibility around the world. After launch, LAC staff recognized that data harvesting and validation issues were delaying uploads. Staff reviewed best practices at other federal agencies and drafted a new submission workflow. The Systems Librarian wrote scripts using Python and JavaScript that automated and improved metadata harvesting and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) validation, reducing staff time to process new submissions from two hours to under 15 minutes.
