Since I’m planning to talk about all the contextual aspects of informal, might I say feral publication online as compared to the database entries I make into BORA, I’m glad that Theo Andrew, co-author of a recent book title Institutional Repositories is explaining what an institutional repository really is.

A repository is “a set of services that a university offers to the memvbers of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members.” (Lynch, 2003)

Motivations can be various: dissemination? preservation? management?

Rune Nilsen, speaking before, said a university’s repository of publications should ideally be the institutional memory of knowledge and said he wanted the university to have its own knowledge management unit.

Theo has showed a number of different ways of setting up an institutional repository, and says that now we’ve figured out most of the technical problems but we still need to build user communities.

He finishes his talk with a slide of questions to the audience. Nice touch.