Abstract
Purpose Triggered by the advancement of information and communications technology, open access repositories (a variant of digital libraries) is one of the important changes impacting library services. In the context of openness to a wider community to access free resources, Wawasan Open University Library initiated a research project to build open access repositories on open educational resources. Open educational resources (OER) is an area of a multifaceted open movement in education. The purpose of this paper is to show how two web portal repositories on OER materials were developed adopting a Japanese open source software, called WEKO. Design/methodology/approach The design approach is based on a pull to push strategy whereby metadata of scholarly open access materials kept within the institution and network communities’ digital databases were harvested using the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting method into another open knowledge platform for discovery by other users. Findings Positive results emanating from the university open access repositories development showed how it strengthen the role of the librarian as manager of institutional assets and successfully making the content freely available from this open knowledge platform for reuse in learning and teaching. Research limitations/implications Developing further programmes to encourage, influence faculty members and prospective stakeholders to use and contribute content to the valuable repositories is indeed a challenging task. Originality/value This paper provides insight for academic libraries on how open access repositories development and metadata analysis can enhance new professional challenges for information professionals in the field of data management, data quality and intricacies of supporting data repositories and build new open models of collaboration across institutions and libraries. This paper also describes future collaboration work with institutions in sharing their open access resources.
Highlights
The sharing of knowledge and information, through information and communications technology (ICT) has a significant impact on people’s lives
Discussion and future directions Given the usefulness of WEKO, this paper has summarised the following important aspects of the WEKO infrastructure which has given four primary contributions in the development of the medium-scale repositories on open educational resources (ROER): (1) managed repository and content development; (2) easy website development using varieties of add-ons; (3) metadata harvesting with Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) compliant; and
The key findings of this research project showed that there is a clear need to promote the role of academic libraries as a partner in Open educational resources (OER) initiatives or leading the institutional OER programme
Summary
The sharing of knowledge and information, through information and communications technology (ICT) has a significant impact on people’s lives. With the advancement of ICT, it has reshaped the landscape of academic libraries as well, libraries really have to redefine their functions, roles and services in order to stay relevant in this new landscape of the future (Liauw, 2011). Such development can be perceived as a threat whereby the traditional libraries can become redundant amid the new emergence of technologies or an opportunity to improve and fulfil users’ information needs. Many libraries rely on freeware and open source software to manage many of the daily operations work (Corbly, 2014)
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