Digital Repositories

There has been a lot of talk about digital repositories lately, but what exactly are digital repositories (also known as institutional repositories) and what do they mean for the library?

This description of digital repositories (DR) has been taken directly from JISC's DR briefing paper:

What is a digital repository?
In simplest terms, a digital repository is where digital
content, assets, are stored and can be searched and
retrieved for later use. A repository supports mechanisms to
import, export, identify, store and retrieve digital assets.
Putting digital content into a repository enables staff and
institutions to then manage and preserve it, and therefore
derive maximum value from it. Digital repositories may
include research outputs and journal articles, theses, elearning
objects and teaching materials or research data.

JISC have committed a £14 million investment into the research and development of DRs and have dozens of example of ongoing DR projects on their website. The JISC site is a great place to start researching DRs and there are lots of other good sites to find more information:

UKOLN - Digital Repositories
SHERPA - Repositories
Wikipedia - Institutional Repositories
SWORD - Simple Web Service Offering Repository Deposit
OpenDOAR - The Directory of Open Access Digital Repositories
EPrints - Open Access and Institutional repositories (web site down at time of writing)
DSpace - Open Digital Repositories

Another great place to look for information is on the Open Repositories web site . This is a web site that is dedicated to the annual international conference on open repositories. This years conference 'OR2009' was held in May with presentations from organisations like the Library of congress, Microsoft, and a host of Universities.

So what do DRs mean for libraries?

This article from asis&t suggests that it is libraries that are taking the lead in developing and DRs within institutions. However, it also suggests that libraries shouldn't be taking on this leadership role and that the management of DRs need to be undertaken by many departments or by collaborations with other institutions because the task is so immense.

This blog post from Everybody's Library states that repositories are essential for libraries and any development within the library should not be undertaken without considering the digital repository. The blog also states that is useful for libraries to distinguish the function of the digital repository from the function of the library.

Leslie Carr is an administrator of an institutional repository and he blogs about his experiences here. There is a wealth of information and insights in this blog and it really worth following the posts or subscribing to it via RSS.

For more information about digital repositories try searching for more blog posts here:
digital repositories
institutional repositories
or searching twitter here:
digital repositories
institutional repositories