The Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA)’s Academic Resources & Repository System (CALASYS) is an important initiative to curate its members’ research works, the organizational archival materials, and other cultural resources. CALASYS uses Omeka, an open source web-publishing platform, to store, link, display, and exhibit its collections. During its development, several aspects of the platform have been significantly improved due to the effort of the CALASYS Group and the CALA members.

To meet the emerging needs for improving data entry, description and access, the CALASYS group has explored and implemented multiple plugins. Among those implemented are Library of Congress (LC) Suggest, CSV Import, and Zotero Import. LC Suggest facilitates the cataloging process by offering auto-completion of subjects; it is linked to various authorities and is synchronous to updates thus helps improve the quality and consistency of metadata. CSV Import and Zotero Import both are instances of batch upload. This poster will demonstrate the improvements brought by plugins as well as the pros and cons of the selected plugins.

Meanwhile, the CALASYS group has been diligently building its collections by reaching out to the CALA members, chapters, committees and task forces. They have also been proactively promoting the platform among the CALA members via mailing lists and social media channels, showcasing it in conferences and involving more members and student volunteers in using the repository and contributing metadata. CALASYS is positioned as the organization’s institutional repository and its development will be an ongoing process to meet the needs of the organization and its members in the future.