The extent of building and managing local contents in institutional repositories: a survey of tertiary institution libraries in Nigeria
| Date | 11 January 2022 |
| Pages | 464-483 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-08-2021-0139 |
| Published date | 11 January 2022 |
| Author | Godwin Oberhiri-Orumah,Ebikabowei Emmanuel Baro |
The extent of building and
managing local contents in
institutional repositories: a survey
of tertiary institution libraries
in Nigeria
Godwin Oberhiri-Orumah
The Polytechnic Library, Federal Polytechnic Ekowe, Yenagoa, Nigeria, and
Ebikabowei Emmanuel Baro
The University Library, Federal University Otuoke, Yenagoa, Nigeria
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this study is to investigate the development of institutional repositories (IR) in
tertiaryinstitution libraries in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach –The study adopted a survey research method.Online questionnaire
and IR site investigationmethods were used to collect data from 25 university librariesin Nigeria.
Findings –The study revealed that only 25 (14.7%) universities out of the 170 universities in Nigeria
have successfully developed IRs and registered their presence in OpenDOAR. Other tertiary institu tions
such as Polytechnics and Colleges of Education investigatedin Nigeria are yet to develop IRs. Contents
such as theses and dissertations, conference proceedings and journalarticles ranked highest being the
most popular contents in the various IRs. The results showed that thedevelopment of IR saves space in
the library, increases readership, increases access to local contents, minimizes damage to the original
material, facilitates the dissemination of scholarly research and assists in globalization of Nigerian
research findings. The IRs site investigation revealed that only few IRs have clearly defined access
policy, content policy, submission policy and digital preservation policy. The study identified
challenges such as inadequate facilities, unstable internet connectivity,lack of fund, irregular power
supply, challenge of collecting materials for the IR, lack of skilled ICT personnel , copyright issues and
absence of IR policies.
Practical implications –The results from the study will provide important data and insight into the
development of institutional repositories in tertiary institution libraries in Nigeria, and generate
suggestions for University Librarians, College Librarians, Polytechn ic Librarians, tertiary institutions
management and policy makers for developing institutional repositories in Nigeria and other
developing countries.
Originality/value –The study investigated IR development in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The
findings will informother tertiary institutions in developing countriesthat the development of IR provides an
opportunity for the visibility of localcontents emanating from institutions and make them see the reason to
embrace thislaudable development.
Keywords Institutional repositories, Local contents, Academic libraries, Developing countries,
Tertiary institutions, Nigeria
Paper type Research paper
This research was funded by Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Abuja, through the Federal
Polytechnic Ekowe, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The authors sincerely appreciate the funding agency for
their support.
GKMC
72,4/5
464
Received1 September 2021
Revised8 November 2021
Accepted15 December 2021
GlobalKnowledge, Memory and
Communication
Vol.72 No. 4/5, 2023
pp. 464-483
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9342
DOI 10.1108/GKMC-08-2021-0139
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2514-9342.htm
Introduction
To make the local contents emanatingfrom Nigerian tertiary institutions to be visible, it has
become imperative for academic libraries in Nigeria to embark on the development of
institutional repositoriesto serve as a platform for the visibility of the intellectual output in
these institutions. Institutional repository (IR) has the potential ofincreasing the visibility,
prestige, ranking and public value of researchers and institutions (Oguche, 2016). Just few
years ago, particularly universities in Nigeria have started to heed to the call made by the
National Universities Commission in 2007 (NUC, 2007), which encouraged academic
libraries to provide access to both print and electronic resources especially those generated
within the university to increase access to information resources and visibility of their
institutions as a measure of prestige and recognition internationally. This is because the
idea of an institutional repositoryisa current theme in tertiary institutions that haveseen it
as a necessity for making available their institutional resources, thereby increasing their
visibility.
Presently, only few universities from Nigeria have their presence in OpenDOAR
(OpenDOAR, 2021). The African tertiary institutions have not made their presence in
OpenDOAR simply because they lack visibility, many of them have not created
institutional repositories to showcase their research power to the world. Nigeria is
hosting the highest number of institutions compared to any other country in Africa
(Oguche, 2016). Salau et al. (2019) investigated the performance of electronic theses and
dissertations (ETD) initiatives in the repositories of federal government-owned
universities due to the poor global visibility of ETDs from Nigeria. The authors found
that the ETD initiatives in repositories of Nigerian federal universities have not made
remarkable progress as digital libraries based on policy, content and system architecture.
The repositories housing the ETDs are also not compliant with the open archive
initiative-protocol for metadata harvesting framework. The first IR in Nigeria was set up
by the University of Jos in 2009 (Oguche, 2016); since then, the number of IRs has been on
a gradual rise and hence the need to investigate the extent of building and managing local
contents in Institutional Repositories of tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Several studies on IRs that have been conductedin Africa are mostly related to electronic
theses and dissertations, challenges to institutional repositories, digital preservation, etc.
(Anenene et al.,2017;Baro and Otiode, 2014;Anyaoku et al.,2019;Ezema and Ugwu, 2013).
Despite the potential benefits associated with the use of institutional repositories,
observations have shown that most tertiary institutions in Nigeria have not keyedinto
this laudable innovation. This could be as a result of some factors such as low level of
awareness and unfavorable perception of IRs on the part of the management of tertiary
institutions, coupled with lack of fund and lack of policy statements on submissions and
restrictions, issues of copyrightand preservation (Ezema and Ugwu, 2013;Baro and Otiode,
2014;Oguche, 2016).
It also appears that the daily researchoutputs from tertiary institutions such as research
papers, theses and dissertations, projects and other valuable library information resources
from Nigeria are not widely communicated to users and researchers all over the world. A
well-developed institutionalrepository is the answer to their visibility and accessibility. The
existing literature shows that no single study has been conducted on development of
institutional repositoriesin tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Therefore,the current study aims
to fill the gap by investigating the development of institutional repositories in tertiary
institution librariesin Nigeria. To achieve this, the following research questionswere raised
to guide the study:
Local contents
in institutional
repositories
465
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