The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits and challenges of creating a shared institutional repository and to, describe the process by which a consortium was able to establish such a service.
A case study is presented outlining the process through which the Washington Research Library Consortium selected and implemented the DSpace institutional repository software in a shared information technology environment. The issues confronted in dealing with a multi‐institutional implementation are examined through both a detailed description of the implementation and a generalized description of the challenges the consortium faced.
The paper finds that while a shared implementation of an institutional repository does present significant challenges that would not be present for a single institution, the collaborative approach also presents significant benefits in drawing on the breadth of expertise available among the Consortium and utilizing a shared information technology infrastructure.
Institutional repositories have generally been implemented within the context of a single institution. An alternative model is described that draws on the experience and expertise of multiple institutions to achieve a common goal.
