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Institutional repositoriesin Canadian post-secondary
institutionsUser interface features and knowledge
organization systems
Julie Mondoux and Ali ShiriSchool of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Canada
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine and provide an insight into Canadianpost-secondary institutional repositories (IRs) with respect to user interface features and knowledgeorganization systems (KOS) used.
Design/methodology/approach – The approach is to explore all Canadian post-secondaryinstitutions and their user interfaces to establish the type of searching and browsing features theyhave used and whether or not they have made use of KOS such as subject heading lists orclassification schemes.
Findings – A directory of 27 IRs in Canada is created. Incorporation of KOS in institutionalrepository is evaluated. The examination is focuses on accessibility, searching, KOS use, and retrieval.Evaluation shows that few IRs have incorporated complex KOS such as controlled vocabularies.Browsing and searching options are available, but user interfaces are usually not modified to enhanceinformation retrieval.
Originality/value – This is the first paper examining Canadian IRs from the perspectives ofsearching, browsing and the use of KOS.
Keywords User interfaces, Knowledge organizations, Knowledge management systems, Universities,Canada
Paper type Research paper
Introduction and literature reviewWith the advent of the Internet the world of research was changed and methods forinformation dissemination were altered considerably. Periodicals available inhardcopies and CD-ROMs became easily available to institutions for a fee. With thefurther development of free search engines such as Google and the integration of eacharticles’ metadata into the web, skeletal information about the articles was madeavailable to anyone with a simple Internet connection. The push to move from the simplebibliographic record with abstract to full access has become known as the open-accessmovement. The main goal of the open access movement is to “remove price barriers andpermission barriers” (Suber, 2005). With these goals, the new ideology aimed to provideaccess to information that was previously difficult to obtain without subscriptions. Thisrelatively new movement began to take form at the turn of the millennium and formalpositions were established such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0001-253X.htm
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Received 30 May 2008Revised 11 August 2008Accepted 30 September 2008
Aslib Proceedings: New InformationPerspectivesVol. 61 No. 5, 2009pp. 436-458q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0001-253XDOI 10.1108/00012530910989607
Open access and institutional repositoriesThe Budapest Open Access Initiative which evolved from a meeting of the OpenSociety Institute in December 2001 describes open access as:
[. . .] free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, passthem as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, ortechnical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. Theonly constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in thisdomain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to beproperly acknowledged and cited (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2001).
The Bethesda and Berlin statements are also corner-stones of the open accessmovement. According to these statements, in order to be considered open access, apublication must meet the following two conditions: authors and copyright holdersmust grant free access, permission to “copy, use, distribute, transmit and display thework publicly” and:
A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of thepermission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediatelyupon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academicinstitution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization thatseeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-termarchiving (Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, 2003).
In order to fulfil these requirements, the usual methods of disseminating research couldnot be used. As the internet had allowed users to access bibliographic informationregarding the research, it would also provide the required infrastructure to support andenhance the open access movement. Open access publications were created and searchengines, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, grouped together a number ofpublications. Institutions saw the open access movement as a possibility to increase theaudience of their research – universities had a new forum in which they could promotethe work of their staff and of their students. The concept of institutional repositoryemerged from the ideology of open access and the desire to expand the scope ofresearch dissemination. The term was coined by the Scholarly Publishing forAcademic Resources Coalition – SPARC (Shearer, 2003). Institutional repositories (IRs)are characterized by the fact that they are digital, institutionally defined (different thaneprints servers which are discipline based), scholarly, cumulative and perpetual, openaccess and interoperable (Crow, as cited in Shearer, 2003, p. 2).
Based on these characteristics, IRs have been defined in different ways. Lynch(2003) describes them as:
[. . .] a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for themanagement and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and itscommunity members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardshipof these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well asorganization and access or distribution.
IRs are more than a simple organization tool. According to Crow (2002, p. 4), they alsoplay an important part in “reforming the system of scholarly communication” throughthe expansion of access to research, the reassertion of control over scholarship byacademics, the increased competition and the reduction of the monopoly power of
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journals, which can bring economic relief and heightened relevance to the institutionsand libraries that support them. IRs also have the potential to become “tangibleindicators of a university’s quality and to demonstrate the scientific, societal, andeconomic relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the institution’s visibility,status, and public value” (Crow, 2002, p. 4).
The early development of IRs provided a forum to discuss issues such as openaccess, self-archiving and the promotion of an institution’s research capabilities. Theidea of IRs was not a difficult one to “sell” to most academics. Some of the mostprevalent reasons were to “increase the visibility and citation impact of yourinstitution’s scholarship; to provide unified access to an institution’s scholarship, toprovide open access to your institution’s scholarship and to preserve the institution’sscholarship” (Bailey, 2008). The purpose of the IRs, based on the aforementionedrationale would be to develop “a mature and fully realized IR containing the intellectualworks of faculty and students – both research and teaching materials and alsodocumentation of the activities of the institution itself in the form of records or eventsand performance and of the on-going living of the institution” (Lynch, 2003) whichwould provide “a new channel for structuring the university’s contribution to thebroader world, and as such, one that invites policy and cultural re-assessment of therelationship between the university and the broader world” (Lynch, 2003).
Lynch’s perspective is not shared by all. Steven Harnad disagrees with Lynch’sdefinition in which IRs include many different types of publications. Harnad wouldprefer IRs that focus on peer-reviewed publications from faculty (Harnad, 2002). Thebroad range of information that would be contained in a fully developed IR based onLynch’s description would possibly make it more difficult for the IR to replaceconventional research dissemination tools due to the variety of information it contains.
The status of IRs is further confounded by the fact that they can be conceptualized asthree different entities: electronic scholarly communication forums; digital libraries; andknowledge management systems (Kim, 2007). Many believe that IRs have the possibilityto transform the process by which scholarly communication is done (Chan, 2004, p. 277).Researchers become more responsible for archiving their work and ensuring that itreached a larger population. The emergence of these new responsibilities and staffparticipation hinged on the platforms developed to house the new IRs.
Implementation of institutional repositoriesSince the term institutional repository was coined by SPARC in 2002, a number ofinstitutions have implemented them, using the different platforms available. A surveyof IRs in the USA was conducted in 2005 by Lynch and Lippincott. Early deploymentwas difficult to ascertain and was likely underestimating deployment (McDowell,2007). Work by Lynch and Lippincott (2005) found that 41 repositories wereimplemented in the USA in early 2005. Further work by McDowell (2007) showedgrowth in the number of repositories in the USA – in March 2007, 100 institutions nowhad repositories. Van Westrienen and Lynch (2005) expanded on Lynch’s earlier workby surveying deployment status in 13 nations. They found that France, Germany andItaly had the highest percentage of IRs – with Germany leading the way with morerepositories than universities. Contents of the IRs were also studied and the surveyshowed that articles, thesis and books were the most prevalent type of materialincluded in the IRs (Van Westrienen and Lynch, 2005). Current lists of IRs can be found
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in the directory of open access repositories (OpenDOAR, www.opendoar.org/) and theregistry of open access repositories (ROAR, http://roar.eprints.org/).
Technology and online information retrieval platformsThe importance of the technical infrastructure behind the IR has been shown – it is oneof the issues reported by Henty (2007) in Australia and Kelly (2007) in New Orleans.The user needs are also very important, as illustrated by Krevit and Crays (2007). Thesteep learning curve was one of the reasons for non-use detailed by Davis and Connolly(2007) and lacking functionality was also a hurdle in the development of IRs. Toolsrequired for providing an appropriate technical infrastructure, facilitate the learning,and ensure that user needs are met through proper functionalities can be knowledgeorganization systems (KOS). KOS is the term used to “encompass all types of schemesfor organizing information and promoting knowledge management” (Hodge, 2000) as itwas coined by the Networked Knowledge Organization Systems Working Group.Knowledge organisation systems “organize, manage and retrieve information” (Hodge,2000). They include term lists such as authority files, glossaries, dictionaries andgazetteers. Classification and categories such as subject headings (for example, thelibrary of congress subject headings), classification schemes (such as the Deweydecimal classification), taxonomies and categorization schemes are also KOS. Morecomplex knowledge organisation systems are thesauri (such as the ERIC Thesaurus),semantic networks (such as Princeton University’s WordNet) and ontologies.
In a digital environment, a KOS “serves as a bridge between the user’s informationneed and the material in the collection” (Hodge, 2000). Since the internet became widelyavailable, a number of studies have looked at how KOS are used online to enhance theorganization, management and retrieval of information.
One of the earlier efforts in this area was the study of the use of classificationschemes, such as the Dewey decimal classification and the library of congressclassification, in a digital environment through the desire project (www.desire.org/).Thesauri use in online information retrieval systems was reviewed by Shiri et al.(2002). This early study showed that both research-based and commercial systemswere using thesauri and that the use of this type of KOS was growing. One of the issuesthat arose from this study was that although the number of thesauri-enhanced searchengines was growing, few of them had studied the user interaction with the searchengine which imposed limits on the overall performance of the thesauri-enhancedsearch engines (Shiri et al., 2002).
Shiri and Molberg (2005) investigated the interfaces to KOS in digital librarycollections in Canada. In the 33 digital library collections surveyed, KOS wereevaluated to determine how they allow the user to search or browse the collection.They found that thesauri, subject heading lists and classification schemes were themain tools incorporated into the digital library interfaces to support the user fulfil hisor her information need. Through the evaluation of these knowledge organisationsystems, they concluded that “searching, browsing and navigation facilities as well asbilingual features call for improvements” (Shiri and Molberg, 2005, p. 1).
Objectives and methodologyAlthough studies have already looked at the impact and usefulness of KOS in an onlineenvironment, there has yet to be one that focused on IRs. The present work will look to
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determine whether Canadian IRs have incorporated KOS on the search and browsinginterfaces and will examine the search interfaces with the objective of providinginsight on the optimal design from a user perspective. Implications of this research willcontribute to the design of the search interface and on the ways in which KOS can beincorporated in order to facilitate information retrieval. The following methodologywas used to conduct this research:
. Review the literature related to the use of KOS on the web.
. Identify IRs, focusing initially on Canadian universities and expanding ifnecessary.
. Identify and analyze interface features supporting searching and browsing inIRs.
. Create a directory of IRs with KOS.
. Identify which repositories have incorporated KOS and how they areincorporated in their search and browsing interfaces.
. Identify main characteristics of KOS used in IRs and compare the differentplatforms.
Institutional repositories in post-secondary institutions in CanadaIn order to identify all the institutions with IRs, the OpenDOAR and the ROAR wereconsulted. Table I summarizes the information on deployment of IRs in Canada.
Interestingly, some of the universities had more than one repository registered totheir institution. For example, Dalhousie University administers the D-Drive documentserver for its Faculty of Computer Science and DalSpace for the university as a whole.This illustrates one of the challenges associated with implementing an institution-widerepository: some faculties may already have a successful system in place and may notwant to change to the new all-encompassing system which may not be designed to suittheir personal needs in the same way as their unique repository. Therefore, in theDalhousie example cited above, the D-Drive Document Server may not correspond tothe accepted definition of an IR – if it is discipline-based, it would be considered aneprint server in the framework of this study.
Table II describes the details of the different IRs implemented in Canadianpost-secondary institutions. The table does not include some of the department-basedIRs such as the D-Drive repository at Dalhousie but rather focuses on the IRs thataccept contributions from the complete institution – or are set up to do so. The websites for all the IRs evaluated in this study are found in the Appendix, Table A1.
Statistically, the mean number of entries is 3,130 with a median of 829 items. TheUniversity of Windsor had the least amount of entries at five but that was likely due tofact that the IR seemed to be in its initial phase of implementation. The largest IR wasfound at Memorial University followed by the University of Calgary. The number of
List Total IRs Post-secondary education institution Other institution or group
OpenDOAR 41 33 8ROAR 44 31 13
Table I.Intuitional repositoriesin Canada
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entries in the different IRs varies greatly. Figure 1 is a graphical representation of thedistribution of entries for the different IRs.
In Canadian post-secondary institutions, data collection seemed to indicate asignificant preference for the DSpace platform. As summarized in Table III, DSpacewas used in 20 of the 27 repositories. It is interesting to note that DSpace was not usedfor the largest IR found at Memorial University. The Creative Commons platform wasused to showcase the university’s Digital Archives. The University of Calgary and the
Institution Institutional repository name PlatformNo. ofentries
Athabasca University AUSpace DSpace 733University of Alberta University of Alberta Institutional
RepositoryDSpace 130
University of Calgary University of Calgary InstitutionalRepository
DSpace 16,147
University of Lethbridge University of Lethbridge InstitutionalRepository
DSpace 578
Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University InstitutionalRepository
DSpace 1,706
University of BritishColumbia
cIRcle DSpace 412
University of Victoria UVicDSpace DSpace 186University of Manitoba MSpace DSpace 2,424University of Winnipeg eCommons Research Digital
Commons159
University of NewBrunswick
UNB Digital Repository DSpace 903
Memorial University Memorial University Digital ArchiveInitiative
CreativeCommons
25,281
Dalhousie University DalSpace DSpace 5,379Acadia Divinity College Digital Collection Other 233McMaster University Digital Commons @ McMaster Digital
Commons5,059
Laurentian University LUZone DSpace 134Queen’s University Qspace DSpace 637University of Guelph University of Guelph Institutional
RepositoryDSpace 1,370
University of Toronto T-Space University of Toronto ResearchRepository
DSpace 9,776
University of Waterloo UWSpace DSpace 2,230University of Windsor WinSpace DSpace 5York University YorkSpace DSpace 636University of Prince EdwardIsland
Rspace DSpace 2,215
McGill University eScholarship@McGill eScholarship 755Universite de Montreal Papyrus DSpace 2,086Universite du Quebec aMontreal
Archipel eCommons 325
Universite Laval Archimede Other 1,868University ofSasakatchewan
ETD Other –
Table II.Overview of institutional
repository in Canadianpost-secondary
institutions
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University of Toronto do have active and large IRs which use DSpace but there are anumber of smaller IRs that use DSpace, even if the institution itself is rather large andlikely generates a very large amount of research that could be showcased in an IR.
This survey information provides an overview of the platforms and contents of IRsin post-secondary institutions in Canada. The next step of this research was to studythe use of KOS in the different IRs. The first step was to identify which IRs hadincorporated KOS and to evaluate how successfully it had been done.
Examination of institutional repositories in CanadaThe examination of Canadian IRs will focus on the platforms used to determine if thereare significant differences. It will then progress to the KOS in place in the different IRs.The KOS evaluation will review accessibility, searching options, KOS, retrieval anddisplay and dissemination and maintenance.
Examination of knowledge organization systems in institutional repositoriesAfter locating the different IRs, the next step was to determine if these provided theuser with KOS to facilitate information retrieval and management. Each IR was
Figure 1.IRs as a function ofnumber of entries
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1-5 6-100 101-500 501-1,000
1,001-2,500
2,501-5,000
5,001-10,000
More
Number of entries
Num
ber
of I
R
Software used Number of universities
DSpace 20eCommons 2Digital Commons 1Creative Commons 1eScholarship 1Other 2
Table III.Platform used inpost-secondary IRs inCanada
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evaluated according to 20 criteria to determine if KOS were not only present but usefulto the user. The evaluation criteria selected were based on those used by Shiri andMolberg (2005) in their study of KOS use in digital library collections in Canada. Thecriteria were separated into five general categories: accessibility, searchingcapabilities, knowledge organization, retrieval and display and maintenance.Appendix 2 contains the complete results of the initial evaluation.
AccessibilityThe first evaluation criteria was determining how easily accessible the IR was. Thegoals of IRs, as per Crow (2003), are to enhance access to research. If the IR is difficultto locate, the information it contains would be even more difficult to find. In order toevaluate how easily accessible the IR was, a search for “institutional repository” or“digital repository” was conducted for each institution from its homepage. An IR wasdeemed difficult to find if the search could not produce a hit for the IR or if the IR couldnot be accessed from the library web site. A total of 13 of the IRs were considered “hardto find” whereas 14 were found relatively easily through a site search from the mainuniversity site or on the library’s web site.
Searching optionsAll of the IRs had both simple and advanced search options as well as a browsingoption. The layout of these varied greatly depending on the IR. The simple search wasfound on the homepage of the IR, as shown in the different IRs represented inFigures 2-7. The simple search, although it was not indicated to the user, performs afull-text search of all the items in the digital collection and does support Boolean logic.The DSpace advanced search interface is represented in Figure 2. The advanced searchenables the user to search a specific section of the IR and search specific fields of themetadata. DSpace (and other platforms as well) organizes its digital collection inCommunities and Collections. These represent a high level classification system andusually represent the different faculties or document types. The advanced search isalso set up to enable the user to incorporate Boolean logic and different search fields.The search fields available in most DSpace platforms are keyword, author, subject,title, abstract, series, sponsors, identifier and language. The advanced search does notspecify to the user that keyword and abstract are full-text searches.
The McMaster advanced search uses a format similar to DSpace where fields can besearched and Boolean logic can be added to the search string. One noticeable differenceis the possibility to expand the number of search fields. The fields that can be searchedare also different. The McMaster search engine enables the user to search by all fields,full text, keyword, subject area, first name, last name, institution, corporate author,date, title, abstract, publication title and discipline.
The eCommons advanced search interface is significantly different. Figure 4 showsthe Universite du Quebec a Montreal form that the user can fill out to search thedifferent fields. The user must fill out a form to perform his or her search. There is noindication if the search engine supports Boolean logic and the form may seemoverwhelming to the user. The fields included in the form are full text, title, author,abstract, keyword, faculty, document type, state (published, pre-publication, etc.),peer-reviewed, name of publication, date and title/abstract/author/keyword.
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Figure 2.DSpace advancedsearch interface
Figure 3.Digital Commonsadvanced search interface
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Figure 4.eCommons advanced
search interface
Figure 5.Memorial University
digital archives initiativeadvanced search
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Another different type of search interface is the one proposed by Memorial which isshown in Figure 5. This type of search interface provides the user with the opportunityto select the specific collections to search – DSpace permits the selection of onecommunity or collection whereas the Memorial search can be done over multiplecollections. It also provides the user with the possibility to search in a selected field andalso provides a proximity search option. The user can know what type of search theyare performing, which provides additional information lacking from the DSpaceinterface.
Most of the search interfaces do not provide search tips to the user. MemorialUniversity informs the user how to select more than one collection; Universite duQuebec a Montreal details the appropriate format for the name search. For aninexperienced user, the lack of search tips may prevent the completion of a successfulinformation retrieval. There are search tips included in the help files but not all userstake the time to consult the help file. Without appropriate instruction on how to searchthe IRs, they will probably not be used to their full potential. Wildemuth (2006, p. 827)studied the impact of search support based on user behaviour (such as Google’simplicit AND) and she noted that “this type of support, may be natural for the user butnot necessarily helpful in achieving the best search outcomes”. A better alternative inher eyes would be to “consider ways to encourage users to employ strategies that aremore effective” (Wildemuth, 2006, p. 827). The search interfaces of IRs look to simplifythe search for the user which may be counter-productive.
Figure 6.University of Calgary IRsubject search and browse
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Knowledge organization systemsAnother aspect that is greatly lacking with the search capabilities of the IR is the lackof flexibility. This lack of flexibility shows that KOS are minimally incorporated in theIRs. Following the evaluation of the searching options, KOS in the different IRs wereevaluated.
Once the search has been performed, most IRs do not let the user modify the search.Memorial University’s Digital Archives Initiative is the only one providing thatfunctionality to the user. In terms of achieving the best search outcome, when the lackof flexibility is coupled with the lack of search history, it shows a significant deficiencyin the IR platform. The user must start with a new search each time – this puts a largeresponsibility on the user to record their searches and try to find appropriatedescriptors. Many casual searchers will not take the time to do this and may find thatusing an IR is a frustrating experience. Although primitive forms of KOS areimplemented through the collections/communities (a high level classification) and the
Figure 7.University of Toronto
IR subject search
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subject assigned to each item, the IRs are not set up to permit the use of the KOS atdifferent steps of the information retrieval process. Each search is independent andcannot be modified or saved which is very problematic.
One of the important search options is the subject search which could also beconsidered a high level KOS if it is implemented properly. As shown in the AdvancedSearch discussion, most IRs provide the user with the option to do a subject search. Byassigning subjects to the items contained in the IRs, a KOS is provided to the user. Butsolely assigning a subject does not necessarily equate to a productive KOS. Most IRsprovide a list of the subject terms included in their collection. The quality of these listsis what determined if the KOS will be useful. If the items are catalogued according tothe LCSH, the KOS is more developed than if author-supplied keywords are used. Oneof the big issues with the use of KOS in IRs arose when the subject fields were studiedin more detail. Table IV shows how the different IRs assign subjects to the items in thecollection.
Most IRs do not use formal subject headings to describe their items. The structurefor subject headings search is included in the platform but the institutions themselvesrarely choose to use it to its full potential. Even with the IRs that do use LCSH terms,most of them do not use it uniformly for all of the items. Figure 6 which represents thesubject search function of the University of Calgary IR shows an alphabetical list ofLCSH subject headings assigned to the items in the repository. There is also noindication of how many items have been assigned a specific subject term which couldbe very useful to the user. There are some IRs that indicate the number of itemsassociated with each subject: the University of Manitoba, Queens’ University and theUniversity of Guelph. Although there is a structure to include subject headings, there isno hyper navigation between the different items which have been assigned the samesubject headings.
The University of Toronto has an additional tool to search/browse subject headingsin a more hierarchical way. Figure 7 shows the structure of the subject search. Itprovides the user with search tips (i.e. it is trying to provide tools for a more efficientsearch) and shows the users the general area in which the subjects are. It also providesa browsing option (not shown) and a filter search. The classification shown in thesubject search is also found in the items. The DSpace platform can be configured toinclude controlled vocabularies (http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/Use_controlled_vocabularies_(JSP)) but that function is disabled in the default platform because theuse of controlled vocabulary is incompatible with WAI guidelines. DSpace does have alicense to distribute the Norwegian Science Index (http://gammel.uhr.no/utvalg/forskning/dokumenter/forskdokNorskvitdisinnst.htm) and the Swedish ResearchSubject Categories (www.ub.uu.se/epub/categories/) which are represented in theUniversity of Toronto’s subject search. The University of Toronto is the only IR in
Subject scheme Number of IR
Library of congress subject headings 6Author supplied 21Other 1 (UVic subject headings)
Table IV.Subject heading use in IRs
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Canada incorporating the controlled vocabulary option in its search options. The onlyother IR using the classification Dublin Core element is the University of Calgarywhich assigns an LCC number to their items.
Although the subject search is included in most IRs, it can produce some interestingresults. For example, the search for “abnormal loads” in the University of Waterloo’s IRreturns four titles – with only two having the subject “abnormal loads” assigned tothem. One of the lacking functionalities of IR is also the lack of highlight of the searchterm. There are some searches that return items where it is very difficult for the user todetermine where the search word appears. It often seems that a full text search isperformed no matter what field is searched.
Retrieval and displayEven with the issues associated with the search, users will be able to find some itemsrelated to their information need. The users can also browse the IRs – by communityand collection, by title, author and title (and some by subject). An example of browsingby title is shown in Figure 8.
Once the item has been located, either through the search function or the browsingfunction, the user has a few options to visualize the results. As stated previously, thereis no option to modify the search after the results are obtained for most of the IRs. Thenorm is to provide two different results display once the item has been selected. Thedefault is the simple item record which is reproduced in Figure 9. It providesbibliographic information to the user along with a link to download the information.
When the “Show full item record” button is clicked, the full record appears in DublinCore, as shown in Figure 10. A record from the University of Calgary is shown as it isthe most complete. The KOS used in the University of Calgary’s IR, as indicated in theDublin Core tags: subject.lcc and subject.lcsh, are the library of congress classificationand the library of congress subject headings. The full item record shows the metadataand depending on how developed the IR is, the metadata is richer, like at the Universityof Calgary or can even be non-existent. The University of Windsor’s IR does notprovide the user with the link to the full item record but since the IR is in its earlydevelopment stages, it may be because it is yet to be populated. The item in Figure 10
Figure 8.QSpace title browse
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Figure 9.Simple item record fromDSpace platform
Figure 10.Full item record
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includes the physical description of the thesis, even if it is an online file. It is likely thatthe University of Calgary simply adapted the catalogue record for the physicaldissertation to format required by Dublin Core.
The displays are user friendly and easy to navigate but the main missing element isthe option to modify the search once it has been done. The full item record illustratesthe fields that would be used by search engines to find the document located in the IR.But is the metadata significant enough to enable the user to find the information fromanother search engine, like Google for example? Margaret Markland undertook a studywhere users were asked to search for IR documents using keywords and titles inGoogle and Google Scholar. She found that better results were obtained when the titleof the work was known (Markland, 2006). One of the main goals of the IR is todisseminate information to a larger population. To determine if it would be possible tofind a particular work using Google, a search was performed using the subject termsfor a University of Calgary document (LCSH) and for a University of Alberta document(which did not use LCSH). Figure 11 shows that entering the LCSH subject headingreturns the item (whose full item record is known in Figure 10) as the first item. Thisrepresents a successful search and would seem to broaden the dissemination of thiswork which fulfils the foremost goal of the IR.
The full record for a University of Alberta item is shown in Figure 12. Although itcontains many of the same fields as the University of Calgary records, it does notinclude the dc. prefix.
A search was performed in Google using the two subject terms included in thisrecord. In order to increase the likelihood of retrieving the document, both subjectterms were included and brackets were used to combine all the terms found in the twosubject terms. Figure 13 illustrates that the Google search did not produce that specificitem in the first three hits – it was actually not included in the first three pages. Thisillustrates the importance of using the Dublin Core capabilities of the IR platform andof using LCSH instead of author-supplied keywords.
When the complete title of the work was searched in Google using brackets, it didcome up as the first result but it was not through the IR but rather through the faculty’s
Figure 11.Google search usingLCSH from IR item
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web site (see Figure 14 for result of Google search) – the IR location was actuallysecond. Unless the title was known, it would be challenging to locate that particularwork – the dissemination of the University of Alberta’s work does not seem to besignificantly increased by the implementation of an IR.
ConclusionThis study looked to determine if IRs were implemented in Canadian post-secondaryinstitutions and if they were, what type of KOS were also incorporated in them. Thesurvey phase of this work identified 28 IR in post-secondary institutions – most ofthese used the DSpace platform created by MIT and Hewlett Packard. The state of the
Figure 12.University of Albertafull item record
Figure 13.Goggle search forUniversity of Alberta item
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IR varied greatly from one institution to another. Some institutions had largerepositories with a constant rate in material being submitted, whereas others had IRswith a few documents submitted in the early days and very little being submitted inthe recent past. The ROAR web site identified the submission date of the documents.The University of Calgary shows a relatively constant submission of documents. Whenthe IR itself is scrutinized, the University of Calgary employs Dublin Core and LCSHfor their items and the Google search returned one of their documents when the subjectwas searched. A successful IR, with appropriate support and funds, becomes morepopular which in turn enhances the dissemination of the institution’s research, which isone of the main goals of the IR. On the other hand, a hastily constructed IR with littlemodifications from the open-source platform can be more difficult to “sell” to thefaculty for many reasons: added work required to submit the work; low possibility ofwork being retrieved from a non-traditional source (Google instead of asubscription-based database) and lack of support from the administrators of the IR.
Overall, most large Canadian universities had implemented IRs. The largest, theUniversity of Toronto, had one of the most developed IR and the contents were seen tobe increasing instead of stagnating. It also incorporated some very basic KOS, such asthe hierarchical subject search. But many other institutions seemed to launch their IRusing an open-source software and then providing little support or few modifications.The inclusion of KOS is not inherent in open-source repository platforms and manyinstitutions seemed to rush to provide this new platform to their community with littlethought as to what would be required to sustain, promote and adapt the IR should itnot meet with instant success. Most institutions have faced challenges when launchingthe IR – some associated with the technological aspects but many associated with theperception of the system. The lack of functionality of these systems may make it a
Figure 14.Google title search for
University of Alberta item
Institutionalrepositories
in Canada
453
challenge to convince faculty that the IR would help their research reach a largerpopulation.
IRs are viewed as research repositories; the goal is to provide open-access to papersand other types of publications. Currently, fee-based services provide that toacademics. These services have complex and ever-evolving KOS integrated andoptimized to facilitate information retrieval by the user. In contrast, IRs provide fewKOS and many institutions do not wish to provide support to staff assigned tomaintain the KOS which results in very low user-friendliness for most IRs. This surveyof KOS in IRs in Canada shows how little work has been done to incorporate them. Interms of user interface work, this study highlights the need to overhaul manyinterfaces to the IRs found in Canadian post-secondary institutions to provide userswith context (through a search history, options to modify the query following a firstsearch for example) in order to enhance their information retrieval experience. The useof controlled vocabularies should be further explored along with the use of thesauriand taxonomies for domain specific repositories. Many digital library collectionsinclude thesauri – granted the implementation is simpler as digital collections canoften focus on a single subject – IR developers should explore the ways in whichcontrolled vocabularies can be incorporated as knowledge organization tools. Forinstance, Strathrints, the University of Strathclyde institutional repository in Glasgow,Scotland has made use of the Library of congress classification scheme to organize theinformation in the repository. IR developers should look to KOS, as the bridge betweena user’s information need and the material in the collection (Hodge, 2000), to helppropagate the information contained in the collection and ensure that an institution’sbody of work reaches as large an audience as possible. Much work still needs to bedone for IRs to facilitate the process of scholarly publication and communication, ashad been envisioned by SPARC when the term was coined in 2002. But since the idea ofan IR is recent, it is encouraging to see how many institutions have developed IRs.Further research should be carried out to investigate information organization andrepresentation issues in the context of institutional repositories. This research shouldfocus both on the use of existing controlled vocabularies as well as user-generatedmetadata.
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Lynch, C.A. and Lippincott, J.K. (2005), “Institutional repository deployment in the United Statesas of early 2005”, D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 11 No. 9, available at: www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/lynch/09lynch.html (accessed 10 April 2008).
McDowell, C.S. (2007), “Evaluating institutional repository deployment in American academesince early 2005: repositories by the numbers, Part 2”, D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 13 Nos 9/10,available at: www.dlib.org/dlib/september07/mcdowell/09mcdowell.html (accessed13 April 2008).
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Corresponding authorAli Shiri can be contacted at: [email protected]
Appendix
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected] visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
University Web site
Athabasca University http://auspace.athabascau.ca:8080/dspace/about.jsp?aboutUniversity of Alberta http://repository.library.ualberta.ca/dspace/handle/10048/188University of Calgary https://dspace.ucalgary.ca/University of Lethbridge www.uleth.ca/dspace/Simon Fraser University http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/index.jspUniversity of British Columbia www.library.ubc.ca/circle/faq.htmlUniversity of Victoria https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/dspace/University of Manitoba https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/index.jspUniversity of Winnipeg http://ecommons.uwinnipeg.ca/University of New Brunswick http://dspace.hil.unb.ca:8080/Memorial University http://collections.mun.ca/Dalhousie University http://dspace.dal.ca/dspace/Acadia Divinity College http://divinity.acadiau.ca/dspace/McMaster University http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/Queen’s University http://library.queensu.ca/webir/planning/qspace.htmUniversity of Guelph http://dspace.lib.uoguelph.ca/University of Toronto https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/University of Waterloo http://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/Laurentian University https://zone.biblio.laurentian.ca/dspace/University of Windsor http://winspace.uwindsor.ca/dspace/York University www.library.yorku.ca/dspace/handle/123456789/899University of Prince Edward Island http://dspace.roblib.upei.ca:8080/dspace/McGill University http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca:8881/R/Universite de Montreal https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/dspace/Universite du Quebec a Montreal www.archipel.uqam.ca/Universite Laval http://archimede.bibl.ulaval.ca/archimede/pages/exploration/
PageNotFound.jsf;jsessionid ¼ A31765A0EE2D5EF46A06DBC1EB4D704 F
University of Sasakatchewan http://grad.usask.ca/etd/
Table AI.Institutional repositoryaddresses
AP61,5
456
Cri
teri
afo
rev
alu
atio
nof
KO
Sin
IRs
AB
CD
EF
GH
IJ
KL
MN
OP
QR
ST
UV
WX
YZ
AA
IRaccessibility
Isth
eIR
easy
tofi
nd
?y
nn
ny
yy
yn
yy
yn
yn
yy
nn
ny
yn
ny
nIs
ther
ea
hel
pp
age?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yn
nn
Isth
eh
elp
pag
eu
sefu
l?y
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
nn
nIs
ther
ea
des
crip
tion
ofth
eIR
?y
ny
yy
yn
yy
Yy
yy
ny
ny
yn
yy
yy
yn
nIs
ther
ea
sim
ple
sear
ch?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yY
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
Isth
ere
anad
van
ced
sear
ch?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
Isth
ere
ab
row
sin
gop
tion
?y
yy
yy
yy
yy
Yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
nA
reth
ere
ind
icat
ion
sfo
rsu
bm
itti
ng
doc
um
ents
?y
yy
yy
yy
yy
yn
ny
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
ny
IRsearching
Alt
ern
ativ
ete
rmsu
gg
esti
on?
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
Pos
sib
leto
exp
and
/refi
ne
sear
ch?
nn
nn
nn
nn
yn
yn
nn
nn
yn
nn
ny
ny
nn
Su
pp
orts
Boo
lean
log
ic?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
Ter
mre
-dir
ecti
onw
hen
sear
chin
gw
ith
sub
ject
term
s?n
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nS
earc
hh
isto
ry?
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
ny
nn
nn
Per
son
alac
cou
nt?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yn
yy
nn
Sea
rch
tip
s?y
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yn
yy
yy
yy
yy
ny
ny
nF
ull
-Tex
tS
earc
h?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
IRKOS
Isth
eK
OS
exp
lain
edto
the
use
r?y
nn
nn
ny
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nC
anth
eu
ser
sear
chb
ysu
bje
ctte
rm?
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
ny
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
yy
Isth
ere
ali
stof
sub
ject
term
s?n
ny
yn
ny
ny
yn
yn
nn
ny
yn
yn
nn
nn
n
(continued
)
Table AII.Evaluation of IRs
Institutionalrepositories
in Canada
457
Cri
teri
afo
rev
alu
atio
nof
KO
Sin
IRs
AB
CD
EF
GH
IJ
KL
MN
OP
QR
ST
UV
WX
YZ
AA
Doe
sth
eK
OS
incl
ud
eh
iera
rch
ical
rela
tion
ship
s?n
nn
nn
ny
nn
nn
yn
nn
nn
nn
nn
yn
nn
nIs
ther
eh
yp
er-t
ext
nav
igat
ion
for
sub
ject
s?n
nn
nn
nn
ny
yn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nD
isp
lay
nu
mb
erof
hit
sfo
rea
chd
escr
ipto
r?n
nn
nn
nn
yn
yn
nn
yy
yn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nIs
itp
ossi
ble
tose
arch
term
sw
ith
no
doc
um
ents
atta
ched
toth
em?
ny
yy
yy
yn
yy
yy
ny
ny
yy
yy
yn
yn
yn
IRretrievalanddisplay
Pos
sib
leto
mod
ify
qu
ery
afte
rd
ocu
men
tsh
ave
bee
nre
trie
ved
?n
nn
nn
nn
ny
ny
nn
nn
ny
nn
nn
yn
yn
nIs
sear
chte
rmh
igh
lig
hte
din
resu
ltd
isp
lay
?n
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nIs
ther
eth
eop
tion
tom
odif
yth
eit
emd
isp
lay
?y
yy
yy
yy
yn
yn
yy
yy
yy
yn
yy
yy
nn
nIR
maintenance
Las
tu
pd
ate?
yn
ny
yy
nn
yy
nn
nn
yn
yy
ny
yy
yn
nn
Bro
ken
lin
ks?
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
nn
Sel
ecti
ve
dis
sem
inat
ion
?y
yy
yy
yy
yy
yn
yy
yy
yy
yn
yy
ny
nn
n
Notes:
A,
Aca
dia
Div
init
yC
olle
ge;
B,
Ath
abas
caU
niv
ersi
ty;
C,
Un
iver
sity
ofA
lber
ta;
D,
Un
iver
sity
ofC
alg
ary
;E
,Un
iver
sity
ofL
eth
bri
dg
e;F
,S
imon
Fra
ser
Un
iver
sity
;G,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Bri
tish
Col
um
bia
;H,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Vic
tori
a;I,
Un
iver
sity
ofM
anit
oba;
J,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Win
nip
eg;K
,Un
iver
sity
ofN
ewB
run
swic
k;L
,Mem
oria
lU
niv
ersi
ty;M
,Dal
hou
sie
Un
iver
sity
;N,M
cMas
ter
Un
iver
sity
;O,L
aure
nti
anU
niv
ersi
ty;P
,Qu
een
’sU
niv
ersi
ty;Q
,Un
iver
sity
ofG
uel
ph
;R
,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Tor
onto
;S
,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Wat
erlo
o;T
,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Win
dso
r;U
,Y
ork
Un
iver
sity
;V
,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Pri
nce
Ed
war
dIs
lan
d;
W,
McG
ill
Un
iver
sity
;X
,U
niv
ersi
ted
eM
ontr
eal;
Y,
Un
iver
site
du
Qu
ebec
aM
ontr
eal;
Z,
Un
iver
site
Lav
al;
AA
,U
niv
ersi
tyof
Sas
kat
chew
an
Table AII.
AP61,5
458
