Abstract:
Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) provide a simple, Webbased
mechanism to researchers to deposit (‘self-archive’) and access
their research publications. There are many world renowned open
source IR softwares available such as EPrints, DSpace, FEDORA,
ARNO, i-TOR, CDSWare etc. Each of this software has a host of
features, unique facilities and excellent capabilities, which the users
could explore and experiment upon. In this paper we emphasize the
need for deploying interoperable open access IRs, and share our
experience in creating a state-of-art scholarly Institutional Repository
using the DSpace software. The system development and
administration illustrated in this paper is on Windows environment as
we have observed that a large majority of the library professionals in
India are more familiar and comfortable with the Microsoft operating
system, though strictly speaking, an open source operating environment
for an open source IR software would have been more desirable. The
method of developing the IR, which include the institutional open
access policies, the installation, configuration and customization of the
software along with the related workflow operations such as defining
the communities and collections, content development and
management, designing and creating standard metadata sets are also
illustrated.