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List Info Thread: ARL Spec Kit on Institutional Repositories Available
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ARL Spec Kit on Institutional Repositories Available |
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List Info Thread: ARL Spec Kit on Institutional Repositories Available
[1]
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cni.org]
On Behalf Of Clifford Lynch
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 12:30 PM
To: CNI-ANNOUNCE -- News from the Coalition
Subject: [CNI-ANNOUNCE] 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
-----------------------------
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.
The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC
Kit are available
online at