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Article
Publication date: 29 January 2021

Shajitha C. and Abdul Majeed K.C.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the institutional repositories (IRs) in South India in terms of policy and procedures, technology, content and contributors, promotion and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the institutional repositories (IRs) in South India in terms of policy and procedures, technology, content and contributors, promotion and assessment and personnel.

Design/methodology/approach

A voluntary survey was conducted to assess IRs in South India. The questionnaire was designed according to the study framework, which comprises 64 indicators across five areas: policy and procedures, technology, content and contributors, promotion and assessment and personnel. Furthermore, all of the 23 IRs identified were monitored over one year period (from February 2018 to January 2019) to analyse the content growth.

Findings

The Research Archive of Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad was found to provide more services to users than other South Indian IRs and it was the sole IR to embed a metadata field for author identification. Almost all the IRs were actively engaged in promotion and assessment activities. IR performance in the technology area was substandard in comparison with performance in the policy and procedures and promotion and assessment areas. For all South Indian IRs, content growth was low.

Originality/value

Very few in-depth studies have evaluated South Indian IRs across all five of the areas listed above and in recent years, no such comprehensive study has been conducted in India at all.

Details

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, vol. 70 no. 8/9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9342

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 2004

Maria Luisa Calanag, Koichi Tabata and Shigeo Sugimoto

The long‐term preservation of digital resources is one of the most important issues facing the library community. In particular, libraries need a preservation strategy for digital…

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Abstract

The long‐term preservation of digital resources is one of the most important issues facing the library community. In particular, libraries need a preservation strategy for digital objects, since digitization alone provides access but not preservation. The digital library community is also focusing on the problem of designing and implementing long‐term archives or repositories. Digital repository management includes the development and enforcement of policies for tasks such as managing access to collection contents and preserving items in the collection. Comprehensive standards and best practices are currently starting to emerge, and ongoing work has deepened the understanding of the needs and requirements that must be met to carry out effective digital preservation. One of these requirements is the creation and maintenance of metadata in support of the preservation process. This paper would like to share findings from earlier and ongoing work that serve as “groundwork” for the current directions leading to the idea of making metadata a more useful and powerful tool to contribute to the technical solution of digital preservation.

Details

Collection Building, vol. 23 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0160-4953

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 January 2023

Gobbrey George Chapepa, Fiskani Ngwira and Patrick Mapulanga

The purpose of this study was to investigate metadata creation practices in a functional academic institution repository in Malawi, with a specific focus on the Lilongwe…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate metadata creation practices in a functional academic institution repository in Malawi, with a specific focus on the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) library.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used a qualitative approach with a case study design. The study adopted a case study strategy that focuses on the in-depth, holistic and in-context examination of one or more cases. The researcher used non-probability purposive sampling to include all three LUANAR Digital Repository (LDR) staff at LUANAR library because they were thought to be knowledgeable about the LDR metadata work. The three library staff members directly involved in repository metadata were investigated for the study. Data collection techniques used in a case study approach included semi-structuring face-to-face interviews and documentary analysis. Data from interviews and documentary reviews were manually analyzed and presented in thematic categories based on the study’s objectives.

Findings

Qualified Dublin Core (DC) was chosen by all participants as the only metadata structure scheme that they will use to create and implement metadata in the repository. DC application profile was the only scheme used to enforce uniform naming and capitalization conventions in the application of Qualified DC element definitions. The scheme, however, was discovered to be the Qualified DC default format in the DSpace system. All participants indicated that the Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Vocabulary is used. Participants highlighted that institutional repository system compatibility, the subject matter of the resources, resource types and staff expertise influenced the selection criteria for the metadata schemes. The repository policy had been developed but had yet to be adopted by the LUANAR management.

Research limitations/implications

The current study was limited to LUANAR library. A wider study across public and private universities in Malawi is needed to ascertain the role of metadata policy, technical knowledge and metadata specialist institutional repositories.

Practical implications

Metadata policy is to aid in the understanding of the data, ensuring that appropriate security measures are used to protect the data and for metadata harvesting purposes.

Social implications

Academic libraries should lobby for management support towards metadata policy for institutional repositories.

Originality/value

Very little is known about challenges affecting the growth of institutional repositories and standards adopted, including metadata harvesting. This paper bridges the gap in metadata standards for institutional repositories in developing countries.

Details

Digital Library Perspectives, vol. 39 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2059-5816

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 June 2023

Gema Bueno de la Fuente, Carmen Agustín-Lacruz, Mariângela Spotti Lopes Fujita and Ana Lúcia Terra

The purpose of this study is to analyse the recommendations on knowledge organisation from guidelines, policies and procedure manuals of a sample of institutional repositories and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to analyse the recommendations on knowledge organisation from guidelines, policies and procedure manuals of a sample of institutional repositories and networks within the Latin American area and observe the level of follow-up of international guidelines.

Design/methodology/approach

Presented is an exploratory and descriptive study of repositories’ professional documents. This study comprised four steps: definition of convenience sample; development of data codebook; coding of data; and analysis of data and conclusions drawing. The convenience sample includes representative sources at three levels: local institutional repositories, national aggregators and international network and aggregators. The codebook gathers information from the repositories’ sample, such as institutional rules and procedure manuals openly available, or recommendations on the use of controlled vocabularies.

Findings

The results indicate that at the local repository level, the use of controlled vocabularies is not regulated, leaving the choice of terms to the authors’ discretion. It results in a set of unstructured keywords, not standardised terms, mixing subject terms with other authorities on persons, institutions or places. National aggregators do not regulate these issues either and limit to pointing to international guidelines and policies, which simply recommend the use of controlled vocabularies, using URIs to facilitate interoperability.

Originality/value

The originality of this study lies in identifying how the principles of knowledge organisation are effectively applied by institutional repositories, at local, national and international levels.

Article
Publication date: 1 December 2001

Aida Slavic and Clara Baiget

Access to educational material has become an important issue for many stakeholders and the focus of much research worldwide. Resource discovery in educational gateways is usually…

Abstract

Access to educational material has become an important issue for many stakeholders and the focus of much research worldwide. Resource discovery in educational gateways is usually based on metadata and this is an area of important developments. Resource metadata has a central role in the management of educational material and as a result there are several important metadata standards in use in the educational domain. One of the most widely used general metadata standards for learning material is the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. The application of this general purpose, metadata standard for complex and heterogeneous educational material is not straightforward. This paper will give an overview of some practical issues and necessary steps in deploying Dublin Core based on the LITC experience in the EASEL (Educators Access to Services in the Electronic Landscape) project.

Details

VINE, vol. 31 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0305-5728

Article
Publication date: 31 December 2019

Sumeer Gul, Shazia Bashir and Shabir Ahmad Ganaie

The purpose of this paper is to explore the status of institutional repositories (IRs) in the South Asian region. The various characteristic features of IRs are studied.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the status of institutional repositories (IRs) in the South Asian region. The various characteristic features of IRs are studied.

Design/methodology/approach

Open directory of open access repositories (DOAR) as a data-gathering tool was consulted for extracting the desired data.

Findings

India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh lead other South Asian nations in terms of IRs count. Majority of the IRs are operational in nature with higher number of operational IRs from India. In terms of record count, India leads the list. “Journal articles” outscore other content type and majority of the IRs have OAI-PMH as their base URL. DSpace stays a prioritized software for content management in IRs. Majority of the IRs have not defined their content management policies. English stays a prioritized language of the content dotting the South Asian IRs and majority of the IRs not providing usage statistics. A good score of IRs has incorporated Web 2.0 tools in them with RSS as the preferred Web 2.0 tool. A good count of the IRs has not customized their interface. Majority of the IRs have interface in two languages.

Research limitations/implications

The main limitation of the study is that the findings of the research are based on the data collected through the repositories indexed by Open DOAR.

Originality/value

The study tries to explore the characteristic features of IRs from the South Asian region.

Article
Publication date: 26 July 2021

José Manuel Barrueco and Miquel Termens

This paper aims to carry out a literature review on the implementation of digital preservation policies, strategies and actions by institutional repositories. The objective is to…

1215

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to carry out a literature review on the implementation of digital preservation policies, strategies and actions by institutional repositories. The objective is to identify, out of the published experiences, at which level they are fulfilling the function of ensuring the long-term availability of the deposited materials.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a systematic literature review methodology, a total of 21 articles from international refereed journals published between 2009 and 2020 are reviewed.

Findings

The research production on this subject is very limited. The scarce number of published articles proves that the interest of repository managers has been focused on issues other than to assure the long-term availability of the assets they store. The literature review has not found clear evidence about how institutional repositories are implementing digital preservation. It is particularly striking the lack of works focused on the situation in European countries. More field studies are needed. They would allow to extract conclusions and produce best practices to help managers to improve preservation strategies.

Originality/value

This study has shown that one of the main functions of repositories is not being dealt with as promised by repository managers. More work in this area is needed. In particular, it is necessary for a study at the European level to gather detailed data that will allow to draw a portrait of the current situation, extract conclusions and produce best practices to help managers to improve or develop preservation strategies.

Article
Publication date: 16 April 2018

Emad Isa Saleh

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the availability of embedded metadata within images of digital cultural collections. It is designed to examine a proposed hypothesis…

1439

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the availability of embedded metadata within images of digital cultural collections. It is designed to examine a proposed hypothesis that most digitally derived images of cultural resources are stripped of their metadata once they are placed on the web.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 603 images were selected randomly from four cultural portals which aggregate digitized cultural collections, then four steps in the data collection process took place to examine image metadata via the web-based tool and windows application.

Findings

The study revealed that 28.5 percent of the analyzed images contained metadata, no links exist between image embedded metadata and its metadata record or the pages of the websites analyzed, and there is a significant usage of Extensible Metadata Platform to encode embedded metadata within the images.

Practical implications

The findings of the study may encourage heritage digital collection providers to reconsider their metadata preservation practices and policies to enrich the content of embedded metadata. In addition, it will raise awareness about the potential and value of embedded metadata in enhancing the findability and exchange of digital collections.

Originality/value

This study is ground breaking in that it is one of the early studies, especially in the Arab world, which aim to recognize the use of image embedded metadata within cultural heritage digital collections on the web.

Details

Library Hi Tech, vol. 36 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0737-8831

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 April 2017

Laerte Pereira da Silva Júnior and Maria Manuel Borges

This paper aims to verify the implementation of digital preservation policies at the institutional repositories (IRs) of Brazilian Federal Universities.

1105

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to verify the implementation of digital preservation policies at the institutional repositories (IRs) of Brazilian Federal Universities.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology used involved the verification of the information available in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and on the websites of the IRs, to confirm the existence of published digital preservation policies. In this study, a sample of the 26 IRs of Brazilian Federal Universities registered with OpenDOAR, which represents 68 per cent of these repositories, was used.

Findings

The main conclusion is that the IRs of these universities do not have any published digital preservation policies, even though some repositories state their intention of preserving digital material in their institutional information policy.

Originality/value

The stakeholders of IRs need to implement a programme to guide their activities to preserve digital materials in the long term. In fact, similar to examples worldwide, this programme should take the form of an institutional commitment outlined in a digital preservation policy. IRs at Brazilian Federal Universities still have a long way to go to guarantee access to digital materials in the long term.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 35 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 October 2014

Aquil Ahmed, Sulaiman Alreyaee and Azizur Rahman

Institutional repositories constitute an integral part of present day digital libraries allowing global access to scholarly publications and provides an opportunity for future…

1628

Abstract

Purpose

Institutional repositories constitute an integral part of present day digital libraries allowing global access to scholarly publications and provides an opportunity for future research enhancement and long term preservation of information. Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) represent a growing segment of available content in institutional repositories where they contribute to the impact and ranking of their institutions. The present study traces the growth and development of online e-theses repositories in Asia within the broader framework of open access.

Design/methodology/approach

The present study tries to discover the composition of ETD repositories in Asia based on the seven key parameters, i.e. country, types, language, disciplines, software, content types and repository policies. To achieve the stated objectives, the ETD repositories developed by Asian countries were identified by selecting the database of OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) and the retrieved data were thoroughly analyzed for the necessary information.

Findings

Theses and dissertations are considered an important part of information resources in any institution. They are often the only source of research work. Unfortunately, access to these valuable unpublished resources is often restricted to parent institution only. The authors found that ETD repositories are addressing this problem by making institutional knowledge available online and thereby not only increasing its visibility and use, but also making them contribute to the impact and ranking of their institutions. Asian countries are beginning to embrace the idea of digitizing, archiving and making their theses and dissertations available online. The study found that more than half of all IRs listed in the directory of OpenDOAR contain ETDs. ETD system is growing fast in some Asian countries. However, the number of universities having e-theses repositories is meager considering the large number of quality academic and research institutions across Asian countries.

Practical implications

The paper argues that ETD repositories not only benefit students and institutions by enhancing education and expanding research, but also by increasing a university’s visibility and use and thereby contributing to the impact and ranking of its parent institutions.

Originality/value

The study hopes to heighten awareness of research being conducted in Asia and its contribution to a global knowledge base. Some of the suggestions to improve the existing conditions and strengthen the growth rate of ETDs in Asia are also presented.

Details

New Library World, vol. 115 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Keywords

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