Progress and future plans for an institutional repository at UA Little Rock
The task
The Ottenheimer Library will choose an institutional repository product to implement Open Access at UA Little Rock.
What is an institutional repository (IR)?
An institutional repository is a digital collection of items produced by or associated with the institution. Often university IRs focus on collecting and sharing scholarship published by faculty and researchers from their institution, but many include student work, institutional documents, and other information of historical and archival value.
Examples include:
Student theses and dissertations
Faculty/researcher/student/staff scholarship
Peer-reviewed articles
Data sets
Presentations
University publications such as
newsletters
magazines
newspapers
journals
University institutional archives
Department records
Historical archives and special collections
Open Educational Resources (OER)
The benefits of an institutional repository at UA Little Rock
An UA Little Rock institutional repository will create a centralized location to collect, preserve, and make publicly available the important records and output of the immense amount of work produced across the University.
An institutional repository will make it easy to find, share, and track the usage of faculty, researcher, and student work.
Progress so far
The IR Task Force, formed in April 2024, included members from the Ottenheimer Library, UA Little Rock Graduate School, Bowen School of Law, and the Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC). They spent the summer of 2024 researching and evaluating IR platforms. During the Spring 2025 semester, the Ottenheimer Library will send out a survey and conduct a focus group to learn more about IR interests, needs, and knowledge on campus.
The Ottenheimer Library will choose an IR platform based on the Task Force’s research and feedback from the survey and focus group.
Get in touch
Use the contact form below for any questions, comments, or suggestions, or contact Donna Rose, Metadata Lead Librarian, at dkrose@ualr.edu.
