Functioning IRs - today's real realities

[Steve Hitchcock <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

*Cross posted*

Ann Okerson has published a curiously-titled short note about IRs in the
latest issue of INASP Newsletter:
Institutional repositories - today's realities
http://www.inasp.info/newslet/nov05.shtml#8

In it she lists an extended range of functions for an IR, then admits 
there are currently no turnkey solutions to support this list, only 
partial solutions, and that this specification is costly: "three-year 
start-up costs for hardware and software alone are over $300,000", without 
including staff costs apparently. This is surely way beyond the costs 
supportable by INASP's constituency, and probably most other institutions 
too who just want to get an IR up and running quickly at low cost.

Today's realities are quite different. There is an alternative that will 
provide a functioning IR to capture and make accessible all the research 
outputs of an institution at a fraction of Ann's quoted cost. It's based 
on EPrints, the original IR software, a focussed IR solution that works 
now, but isn't mentioned in Ann's note.

Although EPrints is free, open source software, there are costs attached 
to running an IR, but institutions should not be put off by excessive cost 
projections. To prove it the newly launched EPrints Services team offers a 
range of service packages from supporting local hosting to a fully hosted 
service http://www.eprints.org/services/sales/ This approach also goes 
some way to reducing an institution's risk on costs.

To understand why IRs are needed and how to build one, Professor Arthur 
Sale, a developer of software to measure usage of IRs, offers a practical 
approach http://www.eprints.org/news/features/worlds_best_practice.php

Ann is not alone in advocating more complex and costly DL-inspired 
functionality for IRs, and it will arrive, but these investigations can be 
left to others for now. This is how Arthur Sale puts it: "Can people fly 
flags and ring bells over conquering Everest when it turns out to be 
Highgate Hill?"

Steve Hitchcock
EPrints Community Manager
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256    Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
http://www.eprints.org/community/