Piloting an institutional repository at a researchintensive university: strategies for content recruitment and the role of the library

Abstract

A research group at a research-intensive university, whose vested interest is in increasing the accessibility of the university's research output to the world literature, has developed a self-sustainable and expandable open access institutional repository (IR). The paper developed by the University of Malaya's IR describes the strategies that the digital library research group employed. It also explains how the roles of academic librarians would change in the process of building institutional repository. There are extensions of existing roles in terms of system evaluation, advocacy, and reference services. New roles include content recruitment and interpreting policies. It also points out possible directions that can make the repository sustainable.