MU Libraries
University of Missouri-Columbia
MU Libraries
University of Missouri-Columbia
The
Digital Institutional Repository
What is a Digital Institutional Repository?
A digital institutional repository provides reliable, long-term access to the intellectual output, in digital form, of a research institution. It is more than just a means for storing and managing digital files; it is the creation of a trusted (and trustworthy) organizational mechanism for selection, rights management, description, preservation, persistent identification, authentication, discovery, and access – now and in the future.
Why a Digital Institutional Repository?
Digital institutional repositories expand access to research, expedite its publication and broaden its impact. They capture, store, preserve and provide access to the scholarly and artistic output of an institution, especially the “gray” literature: conference papers, working papers, technical reports, datasets, and other forms of scholarship that is not normally published.
In The Case for Institutional Repositories, Raym Crow proposed that institutional repositories could advance “…the positive transformation of scholarly communication over the long term.” and “serve as tangible indicators of a university's quality and to demonstrate the scientific, societal, and economic relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the institution's visibility, status, and public value.” [http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/ir.html]
As Crow indicated, the digital institutional repository has the potential to break the commercial publishers’ dominance of the publishing cycle by offering alternative models of publishing scholarly content. Preprints and post-print versions of refereed articles are often found in repositories in addition to gray literature.
Why a UM Digital Institutional Repository?
As Appendix A documents, a considerable portion of MU’s scholarly output is available in digital form. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Many additional gigabytes of research data and publications are sitting on servers throughout the UM system – and at risk of catastrophic loss. For example, two years ago, the electronic archives of the Columbia Missourian, from 1986-2002, were lost in a server crash. Because they were stored in a proprietary database and the newspaper was no longer using that company's archiving software, the files could not be recovered.
The implementation of a
digital institutional repository, incorporating
established metadata standards, and trusted curatorial processes, will prevent
this kind of loss from happening again. Institutional repositories have been
successfully launched at several Big 12 universities like the University of
Kansas, Kansas State,
Appendix A: Existing MU Collections
Existing systems
Department, College, School, Center and Institute collections (a sample)
Individual Collections
Appendix B: Institutional Repositories at Big 12 Universities
Baylor |
BEARdocs https://beardocs.baylor.edu/ |
Planning Stages http://www.colorado.edu/vpact/itsp/chapters/academictechnology/digitalrepositories.html. Campus-wide IT Strategic Plan (ITSP) Chapter 1.7: Digital Repositories Guiding Questions: How should the campus provide and support services such as digital asset management and institutional repositories? |
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Future Positioning - http://www.iastate.edu/~accreditation/4-learning/341.htm |
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ScholarWorks http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/ |
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Research Exchange http://horizon.ksu.ksu.edu:4001/dspace/ |
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Initial explorations underway |
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Digital Commons@UNL http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/about.html |
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No apparent activity |
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E-Archive http://e-archive.library.okstate.edu/ |
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TxSpace https://txspace.tamu.edu/ Customized deployment of MIT’s DSpace see: http://dspace.org |
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Digital Commons@TTU http://digitalcommons.lib.ttu.edu/ |
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U Texas- Austin |
U Texas-Austin --Texas Digital LibraryThe TDL Repository, under the umbrella of the Texas Digital Library, is composed of collections digitally archived by the five Association of Research Libraries (ARL) universities (UT System, Texas A&M System, University of Houston System, Texas Tech System, and Rice University). The TDL Repository serves to preserve and promote the research output of Texas, including electronic theses and dissertations, faculty datasets, departmental databases, digital archives, course management and learning materials, digital media, and other special collections.
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