LIBER 39TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE - Statsbiblioteket

PaRaLLEL sEssIons 1.3 to 4.3
30 JunE 2010
sEssIon 2.3
maRIa cassELLa (unIvERsIty
of tuRIn, ItaLy): InstItutIonaL
REPosItoRIEs assEssmEnt:
an IntERnaL and EXtERnaL
PERsPEctIvE of thE vaLuE of
IRs foR thE REsEaRchERs’
communItIEs
Institutional repositories (IRs) are one of the
most innovative and creative components
of digital libraries. They are a central
service for the research communities and
the institution they serve. They are a showcase
of the scientific output of a research
institution. However, due to manifold
reasons, institutional repositories often lack
institutional leadership commitment and
research communities engagement. Except
for a very few cases it is difficult to reach
a critical mass of content and fund raising
may also become a problem for repository
administrators in economic crisis time.
Up to date there are no standard performance
indicators to assess repositories
activity and demonstrate their value for
the researcher communities. This article
will examine qualitative and quantitative
measures that should be gathered by repository
administrators in order to design
a successful repository.
The idea is to present the repository
assessment as a combination of internal
(quantitative) and external (qualitative)
measures where the first relate to the collections,
total full-text items deposited, level
of ordinary activity deposit, percentage
of faculty participating to the deposit,
value added services provided to the
researchers of different disciplines by the
repository. These measures are often, but
not uniquely, generated from OAI harvesting
information.
The latter relate to faculty satisfaction
of the repository according to the way
repository fulfils researchers’ needs, to
internal and external level of funding and
to policies adopted to support the repository
action (institutional mandates or other
non-mandatory supporting policies). All
these measures are based on qualitative
surveys carried out on researchers and
institutional leadership.
In conclusion I argue that the intelligent
combination of the two perspectives (internal
and external) should help repository
administrators to advocate the ideal profile
of a successful economically sustainable
repository.
maria cassella is librarian coordinator
of seven libraries in Humanities at the
University of Turin.
She is author or co-author of manifold
papers published in Italian and in English
on Digital libraries.
Her current research interests are in the
fields of Digital Libraries, Open Access,
scholarly communication, statistics and
evaluation, mobile applications.
Since 2008 Maria Cassella is a component
of the working group of the Wiki OA
Italia, the Italian wiki on Open Access
http://wiki.openarchives.it/index.php/
Pagina_principale
Since 2009 she is member of the IFLA
Standing Committee on Statistics and
Evaluation.
She is in the editorial board of the Italian
Journal of Library and Information Science
(JLIS) and in the editorial team of two Italian
e-newsletters.
All presentations held in conferences and
some Maria Cassella’s papers are selfarchived
in E-Lis http://eprints.rclis.org/ .
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