Development of institutional repositories in academic and research libraries in Nigeria

Abstract

Purpose The development of an institutional repository for academic and research libraries makes possible the visibility of localized scholarly contents on web platform and also provide open access to restricted resources. This paper aims to explore the relevance of developing institutional repositories for open and unrestricted access to confined resources, and discusses academic and research libraries roles in developing institutional repositories; the types of software to be used for the development; and the hardware requirements for server setup and copyright issues. With more establishment of institutional repositories, access to localized information domiciled in the remote institutions can be easily accessed by visiting the institutional library online to retrieve the material. Design/methodology/approach To provide a thorough breakdown of the building of institutional repositories in the University of Ilorin, Library, webliography sources were consulted. Findings It has been established by the OpenDOAR which is the quality-assured, global Directory of Open Access Repositories that only 30 repositories have been created by some academic and research libraries in Nigeria. There is a need for more academic and research libraries in Nigeria to key into the initiative of developing online institutional repositories to give online visibility to their intellectual contents that have no copyright restrictions in meeting the researcher’s information needs. Originality/value This study revealed a thorough approach and various steps that should be followed in developing institutional repositories for academic and research libraries.