Building an Open Source Institutional Repository at a Small Law School Library - Is It Realistic or Unattainable?

Abstract: Digital preservation activities among law libraries have largely been limited by a lack of funding, staffing and expertise. Most Law School Libraries that have already implemented an Institutional Repository (IR) chose proprietary platforms because they are easy to set up, customize and maintain with the technical and development support they provide. The Texas Tech University School of Law Digital Repository 1 is one of the few Law School repositories in the nation that is built on the DSpace open source platform. The repository is the Law School’s first institutional repository in history. It was designed to collect, preserve, share and promote the Law School’s digital materials, including research and scholarship of the law faculty and students, institutional history, and law-related resources. In addition, the repository also serves as a dark archive to house internal records. In this article, the author describes the process of building the digital repository from scratch including hardware and software, customization, collection development, marketing and outreach, and future development. Although the development of the repository is ongoing; it is valuable to share the experience with other institutions who wish to set up an institutional repository of its own and also add to the knowledgebase of IR development