Editorial
In an article in eLucidate, the online journal for members of the UK's eInformation Group, Barwick and Pickton (2006) explain how institutional repositories (IRs) are becoming an important feature of academic landscape in the UK, as well as in other countries. Their paper is itself an example of the benefits of an IR as it is deposited in the IR of Loughborough University (where one of the authors works) and is, therefore, freely available (at the URL given in the reference) to anyone throughout the world. This issue of Program: electronic library and information systems has brought together a number of papers on issues related to the development of IRs. Simpson, of the National Oceanographic Centre at the University of Southampton in the UK provides a background to the open access movement and advocates the use of IRs in the“knowledge cycle”. Much of the work on IRs in the UK has been funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Hockx-Yu, a Programme Manager at JISC, outlines the issues and challenges of digital preservation and IRs. Simpson's and Hockx-Yu's papers are based on presentations made at the joint internet-based sources user group meeting in September 2005 on the theme“Are institutional repositories taking over the world?” and details of other presentations made at that meeting are available at www.jibs.ac.uk/meetings/workshops/repositories/index.html. Sutradhar's paper in this issue provides a case study on the development of an IR at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, whilst Xia, from Rutgers University in the USA, discusses the challenges of personal name identification in repositories. The technical solution adopted at the University of Wales Aberystwyth for transferring metadata and digital objects between repositories is described by Bell and Stuart and the final paper in the collection provides a solution for making databases developed using Unesco's CDS/ISIS software interoperable through the open archives initiative. A review of the first book on IRs is also provided in this issue.
In late April 2006, JISC issued a call for proposals for research projects investigating further aspects of IRs, in particular to develop:
a common information and communications environment, including addressing intellectual property rights, interoperability standards, digital preservation and appropriate technology; and
the effectiveness of scholarly communication and digital resources in support of research, learning and teaching, especially through sustainable content management (www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/circular306appD.DOC).
The postings on the JISC-repositories mailing list (www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/JISC-REPOSITORIES.html)provides a valuable source of further developments in this area.
All the issues in this special volume to celebrate 40 years of Program: electronic library and information systems include a reprint of a key paper from the past. In this issue the paper by Martin Porter, then of the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, has been selected for reprinting and we are very grateful that Professor Peter Willett, of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, agreed to write an “overview”outlining the importance of Porter's stemming algorithm over the years.
Let us hope that papers published in Program will be deposited in appropriate IRs and so be preserved for all those who wish to gain access to them in the future.
Lucy A. Tedd
ReferenceBarwick, J. and Pickton, M. (2006), “Librarian's guide to institutional repositories”, eLucidate, Vol. 3 No. 2,available at: magpie.lboro.ac.uk:8443/dspace/handle/2134/1122</a.
