Int'l Survey of Digital Repositories Published

[primarydat@aol.com]

Primary Research Group has published The International Survey of 
Institution al Digital Repositories (ISBN # 1-57440-090-8) and 
would like to share some  of its research results.  Just a few of 
the study's many findings are that:

The average institutional digital repository spent $78,802 (US) 
in start up costs.

Close to 41% of survey participants purchased software to develop 
their digital repositories. US-based institutions were much more 
likely than others to  purchase software for this purpose.

The average repository in the sample has been in existence for 
2.85 years, with a range of 'just newly started' to ten years.

On average, a drop more than 12% of the content in the 
repositories came from pre-existing repositories maintained by 
academic departments or some other  institutional unit.

A sixth of the libraries in the sample used Digital Commons 
software, and 28 % of US-based repositories used this product.

14.81% of the institutions in the sample plan to purchase new 
repository software within the next two years.

Only 5.56% of the repositories in the sample use blogs to 
publicize the repository while close to 41% use a paper 
promotional brochure.

Those repositories in the sample that required less than 500 
hours of labor per year had budgets of just less than $9,000 US. 
The largest repositories, those requiring 3,600 hours or more 
annually, had budgets averaging $145,444.

5.21% of the overall labor required to run the digital 
repositories in the sample came from academic departments not 
connected to the library.

The art, architecture and music category was considered a heavy 
contributor by 4.88% of the repositories in the sample, and a 
significant contributor by  9.76%. 41.47% considered art, 
architecture or music to be modest contributors. Most significant 
and all heavy contributors from these fields were from the USA. 
Once again, the BA/MA granting colleges were more likely to have 
significant or heavy contributors in this subject area.

The mean number of journal articles held by the repositories in 
the sample was 772, with a median of 162.

4.88% of the journal articles in the repositories were subject to 
page view limits.

15.56% of the repositories in the sample were funded largely 
through grants.

About half of the libraries in the sample are from the USA but 
the study presents data from 56 institutional digital 
repositories from eleven countries,  including the USA, Canada, 
Australia, Germany, South Africa, India, Turkey and other 
countries. The 121-page study presents more than 300 tables of 
data and commentary and is based on data from higher education 
libraries and other institutions involved in institutional 
digital repository development.  The report covers costs, 
budgets, software, personnel, open access policies,  marketing, 
relations with faculty and other contributors of content, and 
many other issues relevant to those managing or designing an 
institutional digital depository. Data is broken out by 
geographic region, type of college or  institution, and scope of 
the repository, defined by the number of man-hours per year 
needed for operation.  For more information visit 
www.primaryresearch.com.

James Moses,
Research Director
Primary Research Group Inc.
www.primaryresearch.com