Institutional Repository at CMR Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT
Due to advent of new technologies have made it imperative for Libraries to absorb, adopt, adapt, and to provide Information Technology based services to the users. The institutions use modern communication technologies for information management and dissemination. This paper describes the experiences in using the GNU EPrints software and explains in brief the various aspects of an Institutional Repository. It is usefull web based Library and Information services of CMRIT Library.
Keywords: Institutional Repository, Open Access, EPrints, CMRIT
Introduction:
The Institutions are producing good number of research documents that are expanding the frontiers of Knowledge and scope for technological innovation. Advent of new technology have made imperative for Libraries to absorb, adopt, adapt, and to provide information technology based services to the users. Institutions use modern information and communication technologies for information management and dissemination. The Intellectual output of the Institution can be shared by others institutions. The sharing of knowledge may lead to development of Institutional Repositories. A variety of web based systems are becoming available for accepting deposit of papers. These systems make the research output of institution easier to discover, manage and preserve. They also make it possible to share information globally through compliance with a standard metadata harvesting protocol.
Institutional Repository is contemporary concept that captures and makes available as much of institutional research output as possible to the users. It is a sort of database of digital information resource accessible through Internet or Intranet. It consists of formally organized and managed collection of digital content generated by faculty, staff, and students at an institution. The Institutional repository might include electronic documents such as Research Papers, Project Reports, Patents, Thesis and Dissertations. It may also includes Lecture Notes, Conference Proceedings, Learning Objects (Study Materials, Assignments, Question Papers, Audio-Video material, Multimedia presentations, Syllabus etc.) etc.
Definition:
Rick Johnson, SPARC defined Institutional repositories as “digital collections capturing and preserving the intellectual output of a single or multi-university community”
” To self-archive is to deposit a digital document you have written in a publicly accessible website”, From ECS, U. of Southampton, research self-archiving policy
Clifford Lynch defined Institutional repositories as follows, a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution.
Mark Ware (Ware, 2004) adds OAI-compliance in his Institutional repository and defined Institutional Repository is to be a web-based database (repository) of scholarly material which is institutionally defined (as opposed to a subject based repository); cumulative and perpetual (a collection of record); open and interoperable (e.g. using OAI-compliant software); and thus collects, stores and disseminates (is part of the process of scholarly communication). In addition, most would include long-term preservation of digital materials as a key function of Institutional Repositories.
Hardware Requirements
v Intel Pentium 4 Processor or Duo Core
v 512 MB RAM or more
v 20 GB Hard Disk or more
Software Requirements
An Institutional Repositories can build with technology building blocks such as
v Linux or Fedora Core or Windows
v Webserver such as Apache Tomcat or IIS
v Databases such as MySQL, DB2, Oracle, Postgres SQL Server
v Tools like Word, Pdf, Latex, Power Point etc.
v Institutional Repository Software (EPrints, DSpace, Fedora etc)
Software Packages for Institutional Repositories:
There are good number of software packages is available for Institutional Repositories and they are available in several different licensing and distribution models.

v Commercial Software’s
These are available for the Purchase, this software’s can be customized but the source code will be available with vendor. Few of the commercial software’s are
1. CONTENTdm: It is Digital collection management software by Dimema., Inc.
v Open Source Software’s
It can be downloaded for free and these are open source standards. We can customize the source code and can be redistributed. They are
Archimeda: Developed at Laval University Library
CDSWare (CERN Document Server Software) developed by CERN, European organizations for Nuclear Research.
DSpace: Developed by MIT Library and HP Labs.
Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository): Developed by University of Virginia and Cornell University.
Greenstone (GSDL): Developed by Newzeland Digital Library project at the University of Waikato.
GNU EPrints: Developed by University of Southampton.
MyCoRe: It is developed by MILESS Project of the University of Essen. It is a core bundle of software tools to support Digital Libraries and archiving solutions.
v Service Model Software’s
Software vendor owns and distributes a software platform, and also hosts and manages the data of repository. They are
bepress: Developed by the Berkley Electronic press, it builds and hosts their customer repositories.
Open Repository: Service Model software offered from Biomed Central.
GNU EPrints@CMRIT
CMR Institute of Technology is a pioneering institute in the field of Engineering Education for the future Engineers, established in the year 2000 under CMR Jnanadhara Trust. It is offering both U.G and P.G courses, more than 2500 students are studying and more than 180 staff are working. The programme is directed towards modernization of Library and Information center, and establishment of mechanism for Information transfer and access to support scholarship learning and academic pursuit.
Many of the institutions started creating the Institutional Repositories by utilizing open sources and to provide open access to the scholarly literature. They are using long term preservation of Information for the future generations in an economical way. The institutions are using variety of open source softwares for archiving like Greenstone, EPrints, DSpace etc. After experimenting the some of the open source softwares, CMRIT is decided opt GNU EPrints for its Institutional Repository.
GNU EPrints is generic software developed by the University of Southampton. It is available freely for download. It is developed under open source standard. Its primary goal is to setup an open archive for Research papers. Information can be stored in images, audio, video and other graphical information but we need do more changes in configuration files.
GNU EPrints can be run on Redhat Linux or Fedora core 5 or higher and on all other Linux distributions also it will run. EPrints 3 can now install on Windows.
EPrints version 2.3.13 is downloaded form the eprints.org and installed on Fedora Core 5 with httpd server. EPrints is customized according to our requirements and created the subject tree. EPrints is accessible through http://10.201.6.158.

< xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" prefix="v" namespace="">
Figure 1: Homepage of eprints@cmrit
Browse Items:
Items included in CMRIT Repository are
v Articles or Research reports submitted for publication
v Learning materials , courseware, and Teaching materials
v Conference Papers
v Student Projects
v Theses and Dissertations (Doctoral & Masters)
v Question Papers
Items can be browsed by
v Year of the Publication: Here we can browse according to the year of the publication.
v Subject wise: The arrangement according to the Department wise, here we have created subject tree according to our need i.e.
Subject Areas (Department Wise)
o Bio-Technology
o Chemistry
o Civil Engineering
o Computer Sciences
o Electrical and Electronics Engineering
o Electronics and Communication Engineering
o General
o I & II Semester BE Courses Syllabus - New Revised 2006
o Information Sciences
o Library and Information Science
o Master of Business Administration
o Master of Computer Applications
o Mathematics
o Mechanical Engineering
o Physics
o Question Papers
o Telecommunication Engineering


Figure 2: Browse by Subject

v Person wise (Author): This arrangement is according to the Author wise in alphabetical order.
Search:
Searching of items can be by Simple Search and Advanced Search. In Simple search we can search the items by Title, Full Text, Authors, and Date. Advanced search can be by Full Text, Title, Authors or Creators, Abstract, Uncontrolled Keywords, Subjects, Item Type, Department, Editors, Status, Refereed, Journal, and Date.


Figure 2: Advanced Search

Register:
Depositing of the items can be possible only after registration with the EPrints Repository. As a registered user you will be able to manage the EPrints up to the point of submitting them for Editorial Review. If Editorial review is successful, the EPrint will be deposited in the repository, if it is not successful it will bounce back to user with a comments. If User forgotten the User ID or Password can be changed here.
User Area:
Begin a new item: It will allow to cerate a new item and to attach files. The deposited items will not appear until they have been checked by the responsible person.
Editorial Review: This option allows us to view, edit and approve items which are submitted by the users.
In this page we can also see the un deposited items, pending items, most recently accepted items, review of items in the repository, and also we can change the password.



Figure 3: User Area

Conclusion:
Institutional Repositories are recent development in the field of Open Archive Initiatives. It is contemporary concept that captures and makes available research out put of the institution and it consists of formally organized and managed collection of digital content generated by the faculty, staff, and students of the institution. These are stockholders of digital Information with this we can achieve great success in dissemination of Information to end-users and also we can achieve the sharing of information globally.
References:
Institutional Repository, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_repository
Barton, Mary R and Waters M Margaret, Creating an Institutional Repository: LEADIRS workbook, MIT Libraries. http://www.dspace.org/implement/leadirs.pdf
EPrints 2.3 Documentation, www.eprints.org
Self-Archiving and Institutional Repositories, SPARC Paper, Europe.
http://www.sparceurope.org/Repositories/
A Guide to Institutional Repository Software, 3rd Edition, August 2004.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/pdf/OSI_Guide_to_IR_Software_v3.pdf
Patel, Yatrik, Vijayakumar, J.K. Dr. Murthy, T.A.V, Institutional Digital Repositories / e-archives: INFLIBNET initiatives in India.
Published in SALIS 2007 National Conference at Anna University.