Over the past three years, the Canadian Repositories Community of Practice Steering Committee, supported by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, has been privileged to support a growing community of practice among Canadian repository professionals. While communities of practice are helpful across many disciplines, they can be especially impactful for advancing repository infrastructure. Locally, repository managers are often isolated at their institutions, working with limited resources to try to satisfy institutional stakeholders and encourage people to share their work. However, the greatest potential for institutional repositories lies not in these individual efforts, but as infrastructure to connect scholarly communication worldwide. Working together via a community of practice is great for support, resources, and mentorship, but it also enables us to collaboratively envision the future of universal indexing (Chavarro et al., 2025) and the role we might play as interconnected nodes in a “distributed ecosystem” (COAR, 2024). Our committee work has included hosting regular events, developing a mentorship program, and participating in ongoing conversations around important topics for repositories. We are sharing our experience to inspire others to continue these conversations in their own contexts so we can work together towards interoperability through initiatives that are scalable, non-resource-intensive, and accessible.

Scholaris is a new national opt-in shared repository service that aims to support the open discovery and preservation of Canadian scholarship by providing scalable infrastructure and support for institutional repository teams.

Alongside the technical aspects, community engagement is a necessary piece of building a forward-thinking service that reflects the shared needs and interests of the Canadian repository community. Recognizing the importance of building the technical and community infrastructure in tandem, three Network of Expert Groups were convened in Spring 2024 to provide recommendations on key areas of repository management: metadata and discovery, electronic theses and dissertations, and digital preservation. Over a two-year period, each group made significant contributions to the development of Scholaris, bringing critical perspectives, diverse expertise, and enthusiasm to the initiative. While their work was grounded in the Scholaris context, the resulting outputs are broadly relevant to the global repository community.

This panel presents an opportunity to hear directly from Expert Group members, who will discuss their approaches to collaboration and share insights and lessons learned from developing and implementing their recommendations. The session concludes with practical suggestions for navigating the complexities of developing a shared repository service and demonstrates the value of prioritizing community engagement from the outset.