Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
Universities as institutions of higher learning place emphasis on research as one of their core functions apart from teaching and community services. A key criterion that is used to measure the standard of a university is the quality and quantity of research output. A university that falters in the production of brilliant researches that can be applied in moving the society forward socio-economically and technologically, has lost its relevance. It is therefore essential that in expanding the frontiers of knowledge and imparting the society positively, adequate attention should be placed on the intellectual output emanating from the ivory towers. The situation where the totality of the research output emanating from a particular university cannot be ascertained will make it very difficult to evaluate the university output and could also impede the collation and onward transmission of the researches that can benefit different segments of the society to the parties concerned. This reveals the need for the establishment of institutional repositories (IRs) in Nigerian universities. Thus, Institutional Repository becomes imperative to maximize the visibility and global impact of the institution’s intellectual outputs, and also considering the weakness of the existing model of publishing which is rigorous, time consuming, expensive, and scarcely caters for the grey materials and other local scholarship. In the light of the innumerable benefits of institutional repository, university libraries all over the country, Nigeria should resort to institutional repository as a means of coping with preserving and disseminating (for full impact) their ever increasing scholarly out.