The CARL Institutional Repositories Program: Vision, Priorities, and Projects
The Vision
Canada has a network of trusted digital repositories that are interoperable with international repositories. The repositories provide open access to a rich array of research output created at our institutions. The content contained in the digital repositories is the starting point for a number of value-added services that enable the use and re-use of materials in many contexts.
Priorities for the CARL Institutional Repositories Program
Institutional repositories represent one of the best opportunities for libraries to partner closely with faculty and to help shape the future of scholarly communications. They are an important strategy for attaining open access, and they provide a key infrastructure for the long-term preservation of digital materials. The priorities for the CARL Institutional Repositories Program are:
1. To articulate the importance of institutional repositories and the value of the CARL IR Program. To date, the vision of IRs put forward by proponents has not been compelling enough to acheive widespread adoption. The CARL IR Program will raise awareness of IRs and illustrate their important role in the future of scholarly communications.
2. To improve content recruitment at institutional repositories in Canada. Institutional repository collections have grown more slowly than anticipated. The CARL IR Program will engage in activities that assist member institutions in populating their repositories.
3. To demonstrate the value of overlay services for Canadian institutional repositories. To attract users, the CARL IR Program will guide the development of more sophisticated services that enable users to access and use IR content in innovative ways.
Projects for the CARL IR Program
Institutional Repository Advocacy Toolkit
This project will develop a toolkit that will assist members in promoting
their IRs on campus and educating faculty about IRs.
This project is now underway as of October 2007.
Single-disciplinary Pilot Project
This project will harvest material in a single-discipline across several
repositories and build value-added services on top of the content. The project
will involve about 4 or 5 institutions and will assist in determining the
projected operating costs for this type of service. The Project will encourage
partipation of granting councils and faculty associations and applications
for external funding will be considered.
This project is in the planning stages as of October 2007.
Usage Statistics
The usage statistics of the collective CARL repositories could be a very
powerful tool for populating repositories. This project will aggregate and
publicize the usage statistics of Canadian repositories, such as top five
dowloaded papers, total number of downloads, etc.
This project is in the planning stages as of October 2007.
CARLCore Metadata Profile: Phase Two
Many of the functionalities of the new types of overlay services discussed
above require more comprehensive metadata than is currently being assigned
at Canadian institutional repositories. This project will further develop
the CARLCore Metadata Profile to include the necessary metadata elements
that enable the development of overlay services for harvested content.
This project will begin in 2009.
Other Project Documentation
Results of the Spring/Summer 2007 survey [more…]
CARL Institutional Repositories Position Statement: The
Canadian Association of Research Libraries supports the systematic archiving
of, and access to digital research output of Canadian academic organizations
into institutional repositories [more...]
A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up an Institutional Repository:
by Kathleen Shearer, September 2002. This guide, which is based on the experiences
of a number of other institutions, takes the reader through the major steps
necessary to implement an institutional archives. It discusses issues surrounding
pre-implementation, implementation and post-implementation stages and provides
links to policies and procedures of existing e-prints and institutional
repositories. [more...]
Project Listserv
The REPOS-L listserv is an important forum for project participants to share their experiences and keep up-to-date with the pilot project activities. Listserv membership is restricted to CARL members only. Please contact Shaun Hassanali for information on how to sign-up.
Back to the CARL
Institutional Repositories Program main page
Previous Project Activities
Articles:
- November 2004
Jordan, Mark and Kathleen Shearer. "Developing a National Metadata Profile for Institutional Repositories". Poster Session at the workshop, "Institutional Repositories: The Next Stage". Washington, DC. November 17th -18th, 2004. - August 2003
Shearer, Kathleen. "Institutional Repositories: Towards the Identification of Critical Success Factors". Canadian Journal of Library and Information Studies. Vol. 27, No. 3, August 2003. - March 2003
Shearer, Kathleen. "The CARL Institutional Repositories Pilot Project". D-Lib Magazine. Vol. 9 No. 3: March 2003 (Online). more... - January/February 2003
Shearer, Kathleen. "CARL's Institutional Repository Pilot Project". SPARC E-New. December-January, 2002-03 (Online) more...
Presentations:
- September 28, 2005
Mark Jordan, "The CARL Repositories Application Profile” more... - April 28, 2005
"Institutional Repositories: The Evolution of Scholarly Communication". PowerPoint presentation from the CLA/CACUL Teleconference Series "Institutional Repositories and the Role of Academic Libraries" more...
- October 13, 2004
Various Presentations. "Institutional Repositories: The Future is Now" Canadian Association of Research Libraries Workshop. Halifax, Nova Scotia. more... - June 10, 2004
ARL/OLMS Webcast. Institutional Repositories: Revealing Our Strengths. Cosponsored by SPARC and CARL Thursday, June 10, 2004, 3:00-4:30 p.m. EDT more... - June 2, 2004
Mark Jordan and Kathleen Shearer. "Institutional Repositories: Preserving Digital Scholarship". Presented at the symposium entitled: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow Winnipeg, Manitoba. more... - June 1, 2003
Kathleen Shearer "The Promise of Open Access Publishing and the CARL Institutional Repositories Pilot Project", Symposium entitled: The Future of Scholarly Publishing: Whither the Social Sciences and Humanities? Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. more... - May 31, 2003
Kathleen Shearer. "Institutional Repositories: Towards the Identification of Critical Success Factors". Canadian Association of Information Science Conference, 2003. Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. more... - April 3, 2003
Kathleen Shearer. "Introduction to Institutional Repositories". Meeting of the Vice-Presidents of Research, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. - November 22, 2002
Open Access Conference
Institutional Repositories Pilot Project presentation at the Research Innovation and Scholarship: The Role of Open Access Publishing, Ottawa, November 22, 2002.more...
Copyright Issues
- The SHERPA Project. This site lists the permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement. A large percentage of journals now allow authors to deposit there articles in institutional repositories. more...
- Creative Commons License, Canadian Edition. The Canadian Creative Commons
(CC-CA) license enables Canadian digital creators to independently construct
and attach copyright licenses to their works. CARL has incorporated the
CC-CA directly into the institutional repository depositing process. more...
