The development of institutional repositories has typically involved administrative and technical staff from libraries and campuses, with little input from reference librarians and subject specialists. Reference librarians have vital roles to play in helping to recruit authors to submit their content to institutional repositories, as well as in educating users to search such repositories effectively and retrieve the scholarly content from them. The experience that reference librarians have in searching a wide array of databases also enables them to provide a useful perspective on the design of effective search interfaces for institutional repositories. Experience at the University of Oregon demonstrates the efficacy of involving reference librarians in the design and development of an institutional repository from the beginning.