Documenting Institutional Knowledge Through TRAC Self-Audit: A Case Study

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries’ Digital Collections preserve and host more than 27 million files that have accumulated over more than ten years through the activities of the Digital Libraries Division. In 2015, the Division undertook a self-audit according to the Trusted Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist as a way to codify practices and document the stability of the program as it continues to grow. This paper explores the self-audit process within the knowledge management (KM) framework of contextual dimensions outlined by Bouthillier and Shearer (2002), providing background and examples for each of the dimensions: discover of existing knowledge; acquisition of existing knowledge; creation of new institutional knowledge; storage of existing knowledge; organization of knowledge, new and old; and sharing, use, and application of knowledge. Additionally, we analyze the motivations, challenges, and successes of the process based on Jafari et al., (2008), particularly the challenge that the self-audit would have been easier if we had used an existing KM framework at the time since we did not have a peer institution’s audit to emulate, and the success that we have released documentation publicly that has assisted UNT staff and would be useful to other institutions that wish to complete a similar self-audit.