Establishment of Institutional Repository: Benefits and Challenges for Academic Libraries in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper discussed the establishment of Institutional Repositories, its benefits and challenges. The paper reveals that in developed countries institutional repositories enable the free sharing of information, encouraging collaborations and the widespread communication of institutional education and research activities while in the developing countries, the most important problems for scholars and researchers in universities and research organizations is the lack of open access to the current literature in their subjects. Since important research output is most often published in journals with high subscription fees, collecting the required journals exceeds the capacity of most libraries. More so; the research infrastructure and the capacity to absorb scientific and technical knowledge are weak, leading to low levels of scientific output and further under development. The study suggest that it is now time for the developing countries particularly Nigeria to establish Institutional Repositories to
make available, permanently all digital collections of that institutions to all the researchers, academicians, practitioners within institutions and beyond, thereby enhancing greatly, the public value of research.