Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
6-2012
Abstract
Introduction
In the past, researchers were not able to access all the scholarly literature published across the world due to lack of proper communication technologies. With the advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), this problem is solved to a major extent and the results of the research going throughout the world is made available to the public without any restriction. The researchers adopted Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2002 and with the help of Open Access (OA) made the research literature available to the world wide user community.
The Open Access Movement
In the last few years, the Open Access movement has gained a lot of importance and popularity among the academic and scientific institutions.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) defines Open Access as 'free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute and/or print, with the possibility to search or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."
Institutional Repositories (IR)
Purpose
Higher education institutions all over the world are experiencing the necessity of managing their education, research and resources in a more effective way. Alma Swan lists the following benefits that repositories bring to institutions-
1. Opens up the outputs of the university to the world
2. Maximises the visibility and impact of these outputs as a result
3. Showcases the university to interested constituencies – prospective staff, prospective students and other stakeholders
4. Collects and curates digital outputs
5. Manages and measures research and teaching activities
6. Provides a workspace for work-in-progress, and for collaborative or large-scale projects
7. Enables and encourages interdisciplinary approaches to research
8. Facilitates the development and sharing of digital teaching materials and aids
9. Supports student endeavours, providing access to theses and dissertations and a location for the development of e-portfolios