An increasing proportion of an academic institution's output is being created in digital format - reports
and publications, scientific data sets, multimedia objects - and digital repositories are seen as part
of the institution's effort to acknowledge the importance of the these objects as digital assets and
to ensure their long-term preservation and availability for future access.
A digital repository can therefore be seen as the institution's responsibilty for the long-term
stewardship of its digital assets and has been defined in a
JISC review document as :
- content is deposited in a repository, whether by the content creator,
owner or third party on their behalf
- the repository architecture manages content as well as metadata
- the repository offers a minimum set of basic services e.g. put, get, search, access control
- the repository must be sustainable and trusted, well-supported and well-managed
However, not all repositories meet these criteria and their function and capabilities can vary. For
example, the repository may be managed as a subject repository, a data repository or a learning object
repository. Additionally, the search facilities provided may be limited and they may not have the
long-term funding which would allow them to be classed as "sustainable". This has been further
examined in a
review by Yale University
A repository will hold both the digital objects and also the metadata which describes them. This metadata
will be exposed to harvesters - remote applications which search the Internet looking for objects with the
required metadata content. The best-known model for creating and maintaining such a repository is the
Open Archival
Information System Reference Model [OAIS] . Many repositories will support the concept of Open Access,
providing public access to the metadata and content unless restricted by legal constraints.
