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INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY

Lisette M. Soto
LIS 772
Dr. Stewart
March 6, 2016
Institutional Repository
Merriam Websters dictionary defines repository as a place, room, or container where
something is deposited or stored. Institutional repositories do exactly that, they preserve history
and knowledge in academia. Institutional repositories vary in scope and size, depending on the
parent institution they serve. They are a product of evolving technologies in the digital era.
Institutional repositories currently face many challenges of accessibility and copyright laws.
However, because it is a relatively young concept, institutional repositories are promptly
progressing, confidently towards the right direction.
Institutional repositories have multiple purposes. According to Lynch (2003), The
development of institutional repositories emerged as a new strategy that allows universities to
apply serious, systematic leverage to accelerate changes taking place in scholarship and scholarly
communication Before the internet, scholarly communication was primordially done through
published journals. This system could arguably be considered incredibly time consuming.
Especially in the natural and social sciences fields, were new data is constantly being discovered
and rapidly evolving. Likewise, the information published in these journals is valuable even if
the depicted data is dated. Hence academic libraries had numerous stacks filled with these
important academic journals that contain significant, peer-reviewed articles that were not being
used as much. The issue of space ties with the issue of possible loss and destruction of these
journals.

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In the internet age, institutional repositories were developed to address these issues. They
make information readily/instantly available to scholars in all disciplines. Having these journals
digitized and permanently stored in institutional repositories eliminates the fear of losing the
physical journals. Furthermore, the digitization of these journals allows for more space at the
library which is of great importance because, as George Fowler discussed in his presentation,
academic libraries are vastly losing valuable space to other departments within their respective
institutions (2016).
Because institutional repositories are reflecting the world of academia, many different
items are collected in these repositories. The items range from published, peer-reviewed articles
to researchers notes and professors classroom slides. Every institutional repository varies in
scope and size, depending on the parent institution they serve.
The University of Dayton (UD) institutional repository, eCommons, is an excellent
example of the different materials that can be found in institutional repositories. eCommons is an
open-access institutional repository that provides a permanent home for the scholarly work of
the Universitys faculty, staff and students. Its part of an international network of institutional
repositories called the Digital Commons, all administered by bepress, a division of Berkeley
Electronic Press in Berkeley, Calif. (n.a., 2016). Items found at the UDs eCommons are:
Scholarly/Creative accomplishments such as articles, books, book chapters, musical scores,
librettos, works of fiction, web sites, presentations, proceedings, poster sessions, workshops at
state, regional, national or international conferences, patents that have been approved or
technological innovations that have been commercialized, data collected as part of a research
study, technical reports, documents and manuals that have been recognized as a professional or
industry standard, conferences, workshops and symposiums held at the University of Dayton or

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organized by a member of the UD faculty or staff, journals created and/or published by UD

faculty and staff, and the work of UD undergraduate and graduate students may also be deposited
with the approval of a faculty member.
Since eCommons is an open access institutional repository, a person must meet one of
two copyrights requirements in order to submit their materials to the web site. The person
submitting the material must either be the copyright holder of the content or be licensed by the
copyright holder or distribute the content through an open access digital archive. The process of
submitting materials is rather simple. In order for University of Dayton faculty or staff to deposit
material, they must have an account set up with SelectedWorks; once a profile has been made, a
person can add work to their profile, SelectedWorks then approves a submission and transfers
the approved files to eCommons.
Some institutional repositories have a really strong, unique collection of digitized
materials of a specific person, location, event, and/or things alike in addition to their general
repository, for example University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) developed a web
repository that contains over 100,000 Mexican American recordings, The Strachwitz Frontera
Collection. Unlike University of Daytons open-access institutional repository, due to copy right
restrictions, the Strachwitz Frontera Collection is only fully accessible from computers on the
UCLA campus. Although the collection can be browsed freely by anyone who has access to a
computer and internet, in order to fully browse the collection, you must be on a computer owned
by UCLA on the UCLA campus.
Even though the Strachwitz Frontera Collection is the largest of its kind, it cannot truly
be enjoyed by everybody because of access restrictions do to copyright. Copyright laws are one
of the biggest challenges faced by institutional repositories.

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The laws in themselves are not the problem; the problem revolving the Strachwitz
Frontera Collections (and many institutional repositories with other materials) is that there is a
vast number of audio recordings in the collection that are considered to be orphan works,
meaning that the copyright owners of the individual work is unknown. Marc Parry discusses how
the issue of orphaned works came to be in his article Out of fear, colleges lock books and
images away from scholars. Parry states:
Until 1978, to obtain federal copyright protection for most works, you
had to put notices on any publicly distributed copies saying who owned the
copyright... After 28 years, if you wanted to retain your copyright, you had to
apply for renewal with the U.S. Copyright Office... In 1978, the United States
changed the law to make copyright automatic as soon as a work was fixed in
tangible form. Protection was also extended to works that had not been publicly
distributed, like diaries, pictures, and private papers. And the requirement to file
for renewal was essentially eliminated. In 1989, to satisfy an international treaty,
the U.S. nixed the notice requirement.
All these changes meant that an array of different copyright works remained copyrighted,
yet it is difficult to know who owns the copyright since there is no central place to look for said
copyright information. Moreover, many works are considered orphan works simply because the
lack of information on their copyright status. Hence, there are repositories, like the Strachwitz
Frontera Collections, that contain unique materials that are not infringing any copyright laws, but
because the status of the copyright is unknown, then they are highly restricted from the public
domain.

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The future of institutional repositories looks promising. By storing mass amount of

research data out of sight, yet in plain view, institutional repositories will only continue to gain
popularity among academic libraries in parent institutions. Physical space is extremely valuable
in this day and age, and librarians recognized the importance and advantages of storing in a way
that can be easily accessible with the click of a button. The issue of copyright remains, however
there is a shift in research publications, where more and more researchers are required to make
their work to be displayed in open access domains after they have been published for one year
(Conversation with Claire Stewart, February 20, 2016).

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References
eCommons. (2016). University of Dayton. Retrieved from http://ecommons.udayton.edu/
Merriam-Webster's dictionary. (2015).Retrieved from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/repository
The strachwitz frontera collection of Mexican and Mexican American recordings. (2015). UC
Regents and the Arhoolie Foundation. Retrieved from
http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/content/collection
Fowler, G. (2016). Guest speaker: George Fowler, ODU Recrodings. Retrieved from
https://dominicanu.instructure.com/courses/442956/external_tools/34443
Lynch, C. A., (2003). Institutional repositories: essential infrastructure for scholarship in the
digital age. ARL A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and
Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC. 266, 1-7. Retrieved from
http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/publications/arl-br-226.pdf
Parry, M. (2011). Out of fear, colleges lock books and images away from scholars. The
Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://chronicle.com/article/Out-of-Fear-Institutions-Lock/127701/