Institutional Repositories: CLIPP #44

The College Library Information on Policy and Practice (CLIPP) publishing program, under the auspices of the College Libraries Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, provides college and small university libraries analysis and examples of library practices and procedures.

In six sections—Introduction, Literature Review and Bibliography, Analysis and Discussion of Survey Results, CLIPP Survey with Results, Additional Resources, and Sample Documents—Institutional Repositories focuses exclusively on institutional repositories at colleges and small universities by collecting relevant survey data about the planning, funding, staffing, and implementation of repositories at these institutions, as well as documentation on best practices, policies, guidelines, and other information germane to the deployment of an institutional repository in an environment focused primarily on teaching.

Where the repositories of research universities tend to focus on the work of faculty and researchers within the institution’s community and provide access to their accumulated preprints, post-prints, datasets, and other research output, the repositories at smaller institutions often feature student theses and dissertations, honors papers and capstone projects, courseware and other teaching materials, student and faculty published journals, archival materials, and other content that better reflects the teaching and student-focused missions common at smaller schools. Institutional Repositories collects some of the techniques and solutions unique to their size that colleges and small universities have found, including shifting the focus of collection to student research, joining other schools in consortiums to offset costs, creative combinations for staffing, and creating new methods for increasing faculty participation.