Affiliations: Librarian, Banwarilal Bhalotia College (Govt. Sponsored), Ushagram, Asansol 713 303, West Bengal, India. (E): [email protected]
Abstract: The Five Laws of Library Science, proposed by S R Ranganathan, enumerate the operating laws of library science regarding Open Access in library. After the advent of Internet, Open Access has gained huge popularity in the form of open journals and open digital repositories. So, an institutional digital repository (IDR) is a repository where one can store, search, and retrieve digital content anytime, anywhere. This article undertakes a critical evaluation of registered IDRs in OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repository) and total number of IDRs registered in OpenDOAR and the organization which hosts those IDRs. The article also attempts to learn about the software used by the repository, the subject, the content, languages, size, world ranking, policies, etc., of the IDRs registered in OpenDOAR. For this purpose, 75 websites of IDRs have been surveyed and the succeeding content analysis in respect of subject, language, state, policies, etc., revealed that IDRs of multidisciplinary subjects are registered in large number and nearly all the IDRs are available in English. It is also found that open source software, such as Eprints and DSpace, have been utilized in huge numbers to create IDRs. So, it is clear that IDRs will play a great role in the arena of digital libraries.
Keywords: India, Institutional digital repository, OpenDOAR, Open source software, OAI-PMH, Open access, Directory of Open Access Repository
