Best Practice

Best Practice Resources

• Jones, R., Andrew, T. & MacColl, J. (2006). The Institutional Repository. Oxford: Chandos Publishing.
• OpenDOAR. (2007). The Directory of Open Access Repositories – OpenDOAR. Retrieved 24 March 2007 from http://www.opendoar.org/index.html
• Research Libraries Group. (2005). Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist (TRAC). National Archives and Records Administration. Maryland. Retrieved 1 May 2008 from http://www.crl.edu/PDF/trac.pdf

The above resources have been identified as highly important with regard to attaining a level of best practice. These resources have been referred to throughout the OARiNZ wiki because they provide some of the best information for institutions in the process of implementing a repository or those that have set up a repository and wish to evaluate their repository.

Jones et al. (2006) thoroughly address important issues such as human resource requirements and the administration of repositories. A case study of their involvement in implementing the Edinburgh Research Archive and a number of appendices regarding software systems such as DSpace and Fedora are also included. Their book should be consulted by those planning to implement a repository.

The OpenDOAR project is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, OpenDOAR has been set up to provide a reliable listing of open access repositories worldwide. One can then analyse repositories worldwide by a number of different criteria. Millington (2006) identified an alarming trend in repositories, finding that about two thirds of repositories do “not have publicly stated policies for the permitted re-use of deposited items or for such things as submission of items, long term preservation, etc.” According to the OpenDOAR project, Open DOAR (2007) has attempted to provide a solution by offering a tool to generate policies on a number of important areas such as metadata, content and submission.

As mentioned in the Evaluation Criteria section, the Research Libraries Group Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification: Criteria and Checklist (TRAC) has fast become a de facto standard for evaluating repositories and is based upon ISO 9000 and ISO 17799.