Institutional Repositories at the University of Botswana Library: Opportunities and Challenges

IntroductionInstitutional Repository (IR) is seen as a new way for an institution to contribute to the broader world of scholarship. The system is also seen as a collaboration between libraries, technologists, administrators, and faculty to enhance access to the scholarship of the institution. Preserving the institution's intellectual property and increasing the institution's visibility and prestige are some of the reasons for establishing an institutional repository (Macha and De Jager, 2011). Giesecke (2011) is of the view that institutional repositories require carefully thought plans, mutual consultation among all stakeholders and "with intellectual leadership from the faculty and the library working in partnership" there will be successful preservation and continued fostering of the growth of the human knowledge. Despite all the efforts by the University of Botswana Office of Research and Development (ORD), Department of Library Services and Information Technology (IT) to lay a foundation for the launch of IR, to sensitise and create awareness, and to solicit support from the stakeholders, there are still challenges that affect the smooth implementation of IR at the University of Botswana. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the challenges faced by the University of Botswana Library to successfully populate the IR. The attempt by both the University and Library staff to develop and implement an Institutional Repository has not been a smooth sailing.Lack of a Constituted IR TeamFrom the point of view of a Subject Librarian one of the biggest challenges that affected the successful implementation of IR at the University of Botswana Library was Library Management's failure to constitute an IR Team. What exists as the IR team are staff scattered all over the place, each with various roles and responsibilities that make concentration on IR difficult. There are archivists on the one hand responsible for the preservation of records as well as IR metadata quality control and collaboration with publishers; technical staff responsible for technical processes and customer service. Such a disparate range of participants needs clear coordination and lines of operations.The challenge with IR staff belonging to diverse units is that it creates a workflow problem. Research articles are submitted to technical staff to upload into DSpace, an open software package that provides the tools for management of digital assets and which is commonly used as the basis for an institutional repository. The uploaded content is then submitted to the editors in the archives unit where quality control takes place. Due to insufficient knowledge amongst the technical staff, content is sometimes uploaded without all the necessary steps having been taken to verify publisher status. This not only creates a backlog of content that requires editing, it also creates a communication problem between all the parties, especially when the Subject Librarians who submitted the research papers to technical staff are kept in the dark about the status of the articles. Not only does this affect Subject Librarians who are responsible for populating IR in their departments, but it also disrupts the relationship between faculty staff who may have submitted research papers to Subject Librarians. Further, these factors contribute to the slow implementation of the IR.Lack of enthusiasm in submitting research articlesThe process of obtaining articles from faculty members involved Subject Librarians liaising with departments, informing them about IR and requesting them to submit their research papers for inclusion in IR. Some methods included requesting invitations to departmental meetings where proper advocacy could be carried out. This proved to be difficult in some departments because it has always been a problem for librarians to be invited to departmental meetings to market library services and products. This would explain why some subject areas have more content than others. …