The Art of Decision-Making: Navigating Complexity and Uncertainty
Institutional Repositories
1. Institutional Repositories
Wendy Brown
Jen Langley
Joshua Parker
October 2, 2008
LIS 462: Digital Libraries (Schwartz)
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
Simmons College, Boston, MA
2. Institutional Repositories
What is an Institutional Repository?
Institutional repositories [are] ... digital collections
capturing and preserving the intellectual output of a
single or multi-university community. (Crow,
2002).
A university-based institutional repository is a set of
services that a university offers to the members of its
community for the management and dissemination of
digital materials created by the institution and its
community members. It is most essentially an
organizational commitment to the stewardship of these
digital materials, including long-term preservation
where appropriate, as well as organization and access
or distribution. (Lynch, 2003)
3. Institutional Repositories
Institutional Repositories are:
• Centered around a university (other academic
institution) and contain items which are the scholarly
output of that institution
• A collection of (digital) objects, in a variety of
formats
• Include works of various degrees of scholarly
authority and from various stages in the process of
scholarly inquiry. In addition to published works, an IR
may include preprints, theses & dissertations, images,
data sets, working papers, course materials,or anything
else a contributor deposits
• Typically motivated by a commitment to open access
4. Institutional Repositories
IRs & Digital Libraries
Institutional Repositories Digital Libraries
• Are organized around a • May be built around any
particular institutional number of organizing
community principles (often topic,
• Often are dependent upon subject, or discipline)
the voluntary • Are the product of a
contribution of deliberate collection
materials by scholars for development policy
the content in their • Typically include an
collection important service
• Are mainly repositories aspect (reference and
and therefore may only research assistance,
offer limited user interpretive content, or
services special resources.)
5. Institutional Repositories
Origins & Development
OA
Open access movement
and free scholarly
communication
Disciplinary
Repositories
Software
development
Institutional
Repositories
Legal and
Institutional
Deposit Policies
6. Institutional Repositories
Starting & Maintaining an IR
Steps to Building an IR Key Issues:
1. Justify the relevance to the • Faculty buy-in
institution and
contributors • Submission polices
• Intellectual Property
2. Develop a policy issues
framework. How will we • Mediated deposit
find this content and • Metadata
what will we do with it?
• OAI-PMH compliant
systems
3. Build the infrastructure
• Specialized staff
• Outreach and Liaison
Bonus: Get institutional
support and a mandate. services
7. Institutional Repositories
Four Widely Used Systems
Produced by Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress), focused on
maintaining scholarly output. Not open source.
Developed at the University of Southampton (UK). Widely
considered to be the least complex of the major repository software
platforms.
Developed at Cornell and University of Virginia. Based on a
framework known as the Flexible Extensible Digital Object and
Repository Framework.
Designed by MIT and Hewlett-Packard to manage the intellectual
output of research institutions and provide for long-term
preservation.
9. Institutional Repositories
How Does an IR Work?
Submission and Ingestion
contributor metadata
formatting
copyright
Post-Submission
quality metadata (DC)
Intellectual Property issues
User Query
Ongoing workflows
Preservation
Administration
Data Management
System customization
11. Institutional Repositories
Future & Challenges
“We can open an empty library building, and we can
market its existence all over creation, but the mere act of
doing so won't fill the shelves!” (Dorthea Salo)
Librarians care about open access, while researchers care
primarily about their field. How do we ensure that
investigators contribute to and use materials in
institutional repositories?
The Next Steps:
• Content Recruitment and Advocacy
• Mandates
• Mediated Deposit
• Networked communities of teaching and learning
![Institutional Repositories
What is an Institutional Repository?
Institutional repositories [are] ... digital collections
capturing and preserving the intellectual output of a
single or multi-university community. (Crow,
2002).
A university-based institutional repository is a set of
services that a university offers to the members of its
community for the management and dissemination of
digital materials created by the institution and its
community members. It is most essentially an
organizational commitment to the stewardship of these
digital materials, including long-term preservation
where appropriate, as well as organization and access
or distribution. (Lynch, 2003)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)