Long-term Accessibility and Re-use of Institutional Repository Contents of Some Selected Academic Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

The increase awareness of open access, growth in digital asserts, need for accessibility and the quest for global visibility by academic institutions in Nigeria has resulted in the rapid deployment of Institutional Repositories. These Institutional Repositories contains valuable institutional memories such as thesis, dissertations, pre-print and post-print scholarly articles, conferences papers and lots of other institutional memories that need to be preserved for the future generation. Purposive sampling was use to select five institutions that have deployed Institutional Repository with a view to examine the strategies they have in place for the long-term preservation of the contents. The findings of the study revealed that non-of these academic institutions has put in place any strategy to ensure the long-term re-use or accessibilities of the contents of their Institutional Repository. The paper concluded that back-up of Institutional Repository periodically was not adequate enough to ensure the long-term accessibility and re-use of the contents. Recommendation for adoption and modification of Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model as a strategy for digital preservation was made. This model defines the basic functional components of a system dedicated to the long-term preservation of information and could be applied to the long-term preservation of the content of an Institutional Repository. The proposed changes in the service models focused on four of the OAIS functional entities: the ingest of digital object, management of digital objects, storage of digital objects, and access, while the functions of the remaining two entities, Administration and Preservation Planning, can be performed by the staff of the Institutions.