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ARL Spec Kit on Institutional Repositories
Available
This survey provides up-to-date information about the deployment
patterns and strategies for institutional repositories at many of our
leading research institutions in the United States and Canada. Readers
of CNI-announce who were interested in CNI's 2005 work exploring
repository deployment will likely want to review this newer
information.
Fowarded from the Association of Research LIbraries (ARL)
announcement list.
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI
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ARL Publishes SPEC Kit
292:
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES
Since 2002, when DSpace and other
institutional repository (IR) software began to be available, an
increasing number of research libraries and their parent institutions
have established institutional repositories to collect and provide
access to diverse locally produced digital materials. This emerging
technology holds great promise to transform scholarly communication,
but it is still in its infancy. This survey was intended to collect
baseline data about ARL member institutions' institutional
repository activities.
For the purposes of this survey, an IR was
simply defined as a permanent, institution-wide repository of diverse
locally produced digital works (e.g., article preprints and
postprints, data sets, electronic theses and dissertations, learning
objects, and technical reports) that is available for public use and
supports metadata harvesting. If an institution shares an IR with
other institutions, it was within the scope of this survey. Not
included in this definition were scholars' personal Web sites;
academic department, school, or other unit digital archives that are
primarily intended to store digital materials created by members of
that unit; or disciplinary archives that include digital materials
about one or multiple subjects that have been created by authors from
many different institutions (e.g., arXiv.org).
The survey was distributed to the 123 ARL
member libraries in January 2006. Eighty-seven libraries (71%)
responded to the survey. Of those, 37 (43%) have an operational IR, 31
(35%) are planning for one by 2007 at the latest, and 19 (22%) have no
immediate plans to develop an IR. The survey found that most IRs had
been established in the last two years (or had just been established).
By far, the library was likely to have been the most active
institutional advocate of the IR. It was also likely to have been the
primary unit leading and supporting the IR effort, sometimes in
partnership with the institutional information technology unit. The
main reasons for establishing an IR were to increase the global
visibility of, preserve, provide free access to, and collect and
organize the institution's scholarship.
By a large majority, the most frequently
used local IR software was DSpace, with DigitalCommons (or the bepress
software it is based on) being the system of choice for vendor-hosted
systems. Local systems usually either ran under variants of Linux or
Windows on an Intel-based server or under Solaris on a Sun server. A
typical IR holds about 3,800 digital objects, with electronic theses
and dissertations, article preprints and postprints, conference
presentations, technical reports, working papers, conference
proceedings, and multimedia materials being the most common types of
documents. IRs normally support OAI-PMH and, a little over half the
time, OpenURL.
The average IR start-up cost has been
around $182,500 and its average ongoing operation budget is about
$113,500. Reallocated funds from the library's budget are a key
source of IR support, as are new funds from grants and the parent
institution. Staff have been the largest single IR budget item during
start-up and remain so in ongoing budgets. Many IRs were funded
without dedicated budgets, using existing personnel and technical
resources. The typical IR is supported by about 28 full-time
equivalent staff from a variety of units within the library and
elsewhere, a digital library/initiatives unit managed it, and that
unit reported to a high-level library administrator, such as an
assistant or associate dean/director. Although institutional
repositories are at an early stage of development, ARL libraries have
demonstrated a strong preliminary commitment to them.
This SPEC Kit includes documentation from
respondents in the form of IR home pages, IR usage statistics, deposit
policies, metadata policies, preservation policies, and IR
proposals.
ORDERING
INFORMATION
SPEC Kit 292, Institutional Repositories
University of Houston Libraries Institutional Repositories Task Force
* July 2006 * ISBN 1-59407-708-8 * 176 pp. * $45 ($35 ARL
members)
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Handling
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SPEC KITS EXCHANGE
INFORMATION
Designed to examine current research library practices and
policies and serve as resource guides for libraries as they face
ever-changing management problems, each SPEC Kit contains a summary
analysis, survey questions with tallies, pertinent documentation from
participating libraries, and a reading list and Web site references
for further information on the topic.
SUBSCRIBE TO SPEC!
2006 SPEC Kit subscription (ISSN 0160-3582): $210 ARL member/$280
nonmember, six issues per year, shipping included (additional postage
may apply outside North America).
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Kaylyn Hipps
Managing Editor, Web Content
Association of Research Libraries
21 Dupont Circle NW #800
Washington DC 20036
tel: 202.296.2296 x103
fax: 202.872.0884
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