Valuation and Testing of a Model Institutional Repository

Abstract

Open access and Institutional repositories in particular are the whine words of the today’s business of information resources centers and information distribution banks. The predicament of budget and rising costs of information products drive us towards different viable alternatives which in existing sagacity are the free resources. Amongst the various sprouts of open access content, the institutional repositories are the mainstay of most of the research institutes these days. The present paper highlights various pros and cons of a model institutional repository of Aligarh Muslim University at the user end. The users were surveyed allied to different queries for the suitability and the feasibility of the built system. The customization done to the software for the back and front end designs and the various constructs for the success implementation of the model were also looked into. The study found that the users (faculty members and research scholars) of the university possess the knowledge of open content and open resources but are not fully aware with reference to the various attributes associated with the free information. The study explored the user based usability tests and the assessments of the model in order to customize/modify the repository for its absolute accomplishment.