Issues in ksu faculty publication archiving & access

• Author: Prof. Reima Al-Jarf King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Pages: 98-112

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Introduction

An Institutional Repository (IR) is an online locus for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the intellectual output of an institution. It includes research journal articles, preprints and post prints undergoing peer review, and digital versions of theses and dissertations, administrative documents, course notes, or learning objects. A repository is also a place where multiple databases or files are located for distribution over a network (Bruce, 2005; Wikipedia).

The primary purpose of an IR is to help create global visibility for an institution's scholarly research, collect content in a single location, provide open access to institutional research output and metadata, store and preserve other institutional digital assets such as unpublished dissertations or technical reports. Institutions see repositories as a way of displaying their output. They enable easy access to research outputs and link e-prints to other working papers and datasets within an institution (Bruce, 2005; Wikipedia). Repositories are important for helping universities and colleges manage and capture institutional assets as a part of their information strategy. A digital repository can hold a wide range of materials for a variety of purposes and users. It can support learning, research and administrative processes. Colleagues use repositories to share and re-use learning and teaching materials (Hayes, 2005).

Within teaching and learning, IRs ensure the availability of content to improve the quality of the learning experience and cater for different learning styles among the students. Repositories could stimulate culture change in teaching and learning, as instructors have to review how they deliver their courses and focus on the improvement of the quality of the learning experience (Hayes (2005).

Repositories are just a new technology (Bruce (2005). When asked how long their IR has been operational, 52.1% of respondents with operational IRs cited 12 months or less, 27.1% from 13 to 24 months, 4.2% from 25 to 36 months, and 16.6% for more than 36 months (Markey and others, 2007). Pilot tests and operational IR's were very small. It was

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also found that 80% of the pilot-tests and 50% of the operational IR's contained fewer than 1,000 digital documents. Only 8.3% pilot-test IRs and 19.4% operational IRs contained more than 5,000 documents (Markey and others, 2007). With the rapid increase of IRs, material is now stored in an institutional rather than a national repository. National repositories are 'harvesting' institutionally based digital material for storage in their national repositories.

For the above reasons, many academic libraries are actively involved in building IRs of the institution's books, papers, theses, and other works which can be digitized. Research universities lead in the implementation of IRs. Since 2004 rapid growth in IRs has been seen. In 2004, there were 40 IRs in the U.K. Out of the top 20 research institutions, 15 had IRs, others were being planned (Bruce 2005). Of the 446 academic library directors and senior library administrators who participated in the MIRACLE Project, 52.9% had done IR plans, 20.6% were only planning for IRs, 15.7% were actively planning and pilot testing IRs, and 10.8% implemented an operational IR (Markey, Karen; Rieh, Soo Young; St. Jean, Beth; Kim, Jihyun; & Yakel, Elizabeth, 2007).

In the UK, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (2005) carried out the MIDESS Project to explore the development of a digital repository infrastructure, the management of digitized content in an institutional and cross-institutional context. For that purpose, an on-line questionnaire was designed and publicized throughout the MIDESS partner Universities: The University of Leeds, University of Birmingham, London School of Economics (LSE) and University College of London (UCL). The goal of the online questionnaire was to identify how respondents were creating, storing and using digital material; to identify the digital content created by academics; to define the level of expertise in creating and using digital material; and to explore the requirements of creating and using digital material. It was found that a large number of respondents had either used or developed digital material. The technology used to create digital material was sufficiently mature and many university staff felt confident in creating their own digital content without requiring a lot of support. Results also revealed the need for developing digital repositories to assist with the management of digital content at the departmental and institutional levels. Key requirements included the ease of adding digital material to the system, availability of long- term storage, the ability to password-protect or restrict specific digital collections, the ability to search across collections, managing metadata schemas effectively, and providing easy access to digital material, and provide support throughout the entire digitization, storage and material location process.

The Library Consortium of New Zealand (LCoNZ) launched a project to establish a multi-institutional research repository to support the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), University of Waikato, Victoria University of Wellington, and the University of Otago libraries working collaboratively to implement an Information and Resource Access Management System (IRAMS). The Project Report made a number of recommendations to ensure that LCoNZ is moving forward with IRR applications in a collaborative way while acknowledging the immediate needs and priorities of each member institution. Those recommendations included: (i) Preparing a Phase II Project proposal with the expectation that DSpace is the most feasible open source digital repository software system for the majority of LCoNZ member institutions, (ii) involving information technology (IT) Directors from each member university to assist with the preparation of the Phase II Proposal and in particular to articulate the advantages, disadvantages and cost estimates of a shared, remotely hosted technical solution and (iii) to meet the immediate needs of each university in the interim period before a functioning LCoNZ solution becomes available (Shepherd (2007).

A yearlong study of faculty members at the University of Rochester has revealed some of the reasons why current IR systems are more useful in theory than in practice and has resulted in modifications to the University of Rochester's implementation of the DSpace

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repository software code to better align the repository with the existing work practices of the faculty. The findings have also...