Open access repositories on open educational resources

Abstract

Purpose Triggered by the advancement of information and communications technology, open access repositories (a variant of digital libraries) is one of the important changes impacting library services. In the context of openness to a wider community to access free resources, Wawasan Open University Library initiated a research project to build open access repositories on open educational resources. Open educational resources (OER) is an area of a multifaceted open movement in education. The purpose of this paper is to show how two web portal repositories on OER materials were developed adopting a Japanese open source software, called WEKO. Design/methodology/approach The design approach is based on a pull to push strategy whereby metadata of scholarly open access materials kept within the institution and network communities’ digital databases were harvested using the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting method into another open knowledge platform for discovery by other users. Findings Positive results emanating from the university open access repositories development showed how it strengthen the role of the librarian as manager of institutional assets and successfully making the content freely available from this open knowledge platform for reuse in learning and teaching. Research limitations/implications Developing further programmes to encourage, influence faculty members and prospective stakeholders to use and contribute content to the valuable repositories is indeed a challenging task. Originality/value This paper provides insight for academic libraries on how open access repositories development and metadata analysis can enhance new professional challenges for information professionals in the field of data management, data quality and intricacies of supporting data repositories and build new open models of collaboration across institutions and libraries. This paper also describes future collaboration work with institutions in sharing their open access resources.