A panel presentation given at the Open Repositories conference in 2015 held in Indianapolis described thus and Partnerships for shared repositories offer the promise of repository services at a decreased cost due to shared infrastructure and staff. In practice, reduced costs for shared repositories often require tradeoffs in security or access for the shared system. Staff working in a shared system may be geographically distributed or may work for different institutions with different priorities and reporting lines. Effective use of shared services requires thoughtful communication and tools that help maintain consistency and prevent conflicts when multiple people work in the same system. In this panel, shared repository service managers for multisite Islandora installations and a Hydra partnership will discuss methods for distributing system access and communicating with staff who work at our parent organizations, partner institutions, and third-party vendors. Each panelist will discuss the methods used so that distributed staff can have the level of access necessary to use the repository’s unique functions, while also ensuring that widely distributed system access doesn’t result in data loss or system failures.