The purpose of the paper is to show how an institutional repository can be successfully created by university libraries with limited financial and technological resources.
In this paper the library's experience creating an institutional repository despite financial and technological limitations is recounted.
The paper finds that a serviceable repository may be created by focusing on its critical elements, and adapting existing resources, including a proprietary system currently used for other digital resources.
The paper shows that librarians should not assume that open‐source systems are the only vehicles for providing institutional repositories, or that such a service is necessarily beyond their capabilities.
Academic libraries do not have to follow an involved, idealized process to create an institutional repository based upon open‐source software. Systems already at hand, even if proprietary, may be adapted and real‐world limitations surmounted to create such a resource.
