Rachel PlayforthRepository Coordinator

British Library for Development Studies

ASAUK

11 September 2014

The BLDS Digital Library: open access to African grey literature

http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=205#© Copyright Sasi Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan). CC By-NC-ND

The world according to number of scientific publications*

*2001 data from SCI and SSCI via World Development Indicators

RationaleScientific and technological information and knowledge is critical to the development of Africa. However, very little research output from Africa finds its way into the international journals. Much of it is in the form of grey literature … and is not visible and easily accessible to potential users

(Chisenga, 2006)

By making available research generated in poor countries in addition to knowledge created in well-endowed institutions, institutional repositories could play a role in bridging the global knowledge gap.

(Chan, 2004)

“grey literature,” which libraries used to receive from departments and research centers in paper, now often exist[s] only on the web; the risk of loss is great if there is not an archival system like an IR in place. (Kennison et al., 2013)

Downloads per item are often higher for grey literature than for published articles. (Schopfel et al.,2012)

Our collection

National and international resource for development studies

Over 200,000 titles, 1 million physical items

60% published in developing countries

High proportion of unique holdings including grey literature

= good candidates for digitisation

Project background and funding

Mobilizing Knowledge for Development (2010-2013) improving the profile and accessibility of

Southern development research digitisation of BLDS holdings BLDS Digital Library (2011-)

Global Open Knowledge Hub (2013-2016) supporting local (Southern) digitisation

OpenDocs and IDS institutional repository linkages

The BLDS Digital Library

http://blds.ids.ac.uk/digital-library

DSpace open source software

Searchable and browsable Community/ collection

structure Indexed by Google,

GScholar, OpenDOAR, JURN…

Our approach

What’s not already online/widely distributed? Low hanging copyright fruit Focus countries in Africa and South Asia IDS research themes Openness vs IP protection

Our partners

22 universities and research institutes

Based in 8 African and 6 Asian countries

BLDS Digital Library benefits

DiscoverabilitySearchable, harvestable, described, linked

OpennessFree, reusable, CC licensed

PreservationStored, backed up, uniquely identified

AuthorityBrand association, quality controlled

MetricsPublic and custom usage statistics

Community benefits

OpenDocs enriched as a repository – not just institutional.

Wide range of research/voices in one place. Brings together dispersed outputs Equity for Southern-produced

research.

What’s in the Digital Library

Working papers, conference proceedings, reports, briefings, theses etc

Social sciences especially economic, social and political development

2650 full-text papers so far 1953 – 2014

Usage and demographics

Around 20,000 downloads per month

Around 13% of all downloads come from Africa

High usage in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda

Demand for African research about Africa

Partnership models

1. From 10 digitised documents to national agreements: Forum for Social Studies, Ethiopia

2. From supply to demand: Research on Poverty Alleviation, Tanzania

3. From BLDS collections to local capacity: University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Forum for Social Studies, Ethiopia

1. Initial digitisation from BLDS holdings

2. In-country capacity building and equipment transfer

3. Development of own repository

4. CEARL, national planning and MoU

REPOA, Tanzania

1. Request for inclusion

2. BLDS download of born digital materials

3. Copies added to BLDS Digital Library

University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

1. Initial digitisation from BLDS holdings

2. Further material supplied by partner

3. BLDS funding for human resources and equipment

4. Remote training and support

5. Full in-country digitisation, unique material now online

Sustainability

Our funding ends in 2016 – what next?

Secure IDS institutional infrastructure (shared Dspace platform)

Potentially self-sustaining, but… …requires internal institutional

capacity of partners Technology is not enough

CEARL National Digital Repository Workshop, Addis Ababa, February 2013Photo by BLDS

Issues, barriers and lessons learned

Permission seeking non-response licensing and IP/revenue protection

Institutional politics Resource-poor contexts Partner needs vs funder restrictions No one-size-fits-all approach Resource-intensive Mutual learning

Image credits and references

All graphics from The Noun Project, public domain or CC By as below:Search designed by Gianni - Dolce Merda

Document designed by iconoci

Statistics designed by Nate Eul

Team designed by Stephen Borengasser

Chan, L. (2004). Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age: The Role of Open Access Institutional Repository. Canadian Journal Of Communication, 29(3).

Chisenga, J. (2006) ‘The development and use of digital libraries, institutional digital repositories and open access archives for research and national development in Africa: opportunities and challenges.’ Presented at the Workshop on Building African Capacity to Implement the Outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the Sphere of Libraries and Access to Information and Knowledge, Addis Ababa, Tuesday, 28 March 2006.

Kennison, R, Shreeves, SL, Harnad, S. (2013). Point & Counterpoint: The Purpose of Institutional Repositories: Green OA or Beyond?. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 1(4).

Schöpfel, J., Prost, H., & Le Bescond, I. (2012) Open Is Not Enough: Grey Literature in Institutional Repositories. In GL 13: Thirteenth International Conference on Grey Literature: The Grey Circuit. From Social Networking to Wealth Creation. Washington, 5-6 December 2011.

Thank you!

http://blds.ids.ac.ukhttp://blds.ids.ac.uk/digital-library

r.playforth@ids.ac.uk@blds_library @archelina