Primary Research Group has published The International Survey of
Institutional Digital Repositories (ISBN # 1-57440- 090-8) and would like to share some
of its research results. More than 50% of digital repositories in
industrialized countries outside of the USA considered law libraries to be significant
contributors while only 5% of US repositories did so.
Just a few of the study’s other many findings are that:
* The average institutional digital repository spent $78,802 (US) in
start up costs.
* Close to 41% of survey participants purchased software to develop
their digital repositories. US-based institutions were much more likely than
others to purchase software for this purpose.
* The average repository in the sample has been in existence for 2.85
years, with a range of ‘just newly started’ to ten years.
* On average, a drop more than 12% of the content in the repositories
came from pre-existing repositories maintained by academic departments or
some other institutional unit.
* A sixth of the libraries in the sample used Digital Commons software,
and 28% of US-based repositories used this product.
* 14.81% of the institutions in the sample plan to purchase new
repository software within the next two years.
* Only 5.56% of the repositories in the sample use blogs to publicize
the repository while close to 41% use a paper promotional brochure.
* Those repositories in the sample that required less than 500 hours
of labor per year had budgets of just less than $9,000 US. The largest
repositories, those requiring 3,600 hours or more annually, had budgets averaging
$145,444.
* 5.21% of the overall labor required to run the digital repositories
in the sample came from academic departments not connected to the library.
* The art, architecture and music category was considered a heavy
contributor by 4.88% of the repositories in the sample, and a significant
contributor by 9.76%. 41.47% considered art, architecture or music to be modest
contributors. Most significant and all heavy contributors from these fields were
from the USA. Once again, the BA/MA granting colleges were more likely to
have significant or heavy contributors in this subject area.
* The mean number of journal articles held by the repositories in the
sample was 772 with a mean of 162.
* 4.88% of the journal articles in the repositories were subject to
page view limits.
* 15.56% of the repositories in the sample were funded largely through
grants.
About half of the libraries in the sample are from the USA but the study
presents data from 56 institutional digital repositories from eleven countries,
including the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, South Africa, India, Turkey and
other countries. The 121-page study presents more than 300 tables of data
and commentary and is based on data from higher education libraries and other
institutions involved in institutional digital repository development.
The report covers costs, budgets, software, personnel, open access policies,
marketing, relations with faculty and other contributors of content, and
many other issues relevant to those managing or designing an institutional
digital depository. Data is broken out by geographic region, type of college or
institution, and scope of the repository, defined by the number of man-hours per
year needed for operation.
For more information visit www.primaryresearch.com.
James Moses, Research Director
Primary Research Group Inc.
www.primaryresearch.com
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