Institutional Repositories for Knowledge Management in Academic and Research Institutions

Abstract

Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) provide a simple, Web based mechanism to researchers to deposit (‘self-archive’) and access their research publications. There are many world renowned open source IR softwares available such as EPrints, DSpace, FEDORA, RNO, i-TOR, CDSWare etc. Each of this software has a host of features, unique facilities and excellent capabilities, which the users could explore and experiment upon. In this paper we emphasize the need for deploying interoperable open access IRs, and share our experience in creating a state-of-art scholarly Institutional Repository using the DSpace software. The system development and administration illustrated in this paper is on Windows environment as we have observed that a large majority of the library professionals in India are more familiar and comfortable with the Microsoft operating system, though strictly speaking, an open source operating environment for an open source IR software would have been more desirable. The method of developing the IR, which include the institutional open access policies, the installation, configuration and customization of the software along with the related workflow operations such as defining the communities and collections, content development and management, designing and creating standard metadata sets are also illustrated.