Institutional Repositories: Ensuring Continued Access to Learning Objects

Abstract

The MIRACLE (Making Institutional Repositories A Collaborative Learning Environment) Project investigates the development of institutional repositories in colleges and universities in order to identify models and best practices in the administration, technical infrastructure, and access to repository collections. The project addresses various issues and problems related to the institutional repository development from multiple perspectives of users (contributors and end-users) and administrative staff of institutional repositories. In order to take accounts for the perspectives of diverse institutional repository stakeholders, the MIRACLE project carried out five research activities over four years (October 2005 to September 2009) that involved surveying institutional repositories in the U.S., conducting follow-up phone interviews with institutional repository staff, surveying current and prospective repository users, conducting cases studies, and studying users’ searching behavior of institutional repository resources.