Content area
Purpose - Management Institutions in India are being ranked by various surveys, which give importance to parameters like placements, brand value and intellectual capital. Intellectual capital of a Management Institute is the published scholarly material of its faculty consisting of of articles, journal papers published, case studies, books compiled, etc. Use of technologies like Institutional Repositories for capturing the intellectual capital and enabling knowledge sharing in academic institutions especially in developing countries like India are emerging. The purpose of this paper is to describe a survey conducted to ascertain different considerations for implementing an institutional repository and the creation of the pilot Institutional Repository at the ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad using the Open Source DSpace Institutional Repository Software. Design/methodology/approach - The survey conducted at ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad to ascertain the need of an institutional repository and the different aspects associated with the setting up of institutional repository is described. The phases involved in the development of the pilot Institutional Repository at ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad using open source DSpace Institutional repository software to capture the intellectual capital and enable knowledge sharing are also described. Findings - Installation of the Institutional Repository is complex, requiring technical know-how of different software. Creation of communities and collections, archiving of documents into the Repository, enriching them with metadata are essential for efficient retrieval of information. Some knowledge of computers and DSpace software is essential. Research limitations/implications - Once the Institutional Repository is created it needs to be maintained. Faculty and staff need to be trained for proper uploading of documents and submitting metadata into the repository. Practical implications - Knowledge sharing of the conference papers presented, journal papers written, books edited, etc., among the faculty of the Institute is possible with the creation of the digital repository. The intellectual capital of the Institute is available at one centralized location facilitating easy information retrieval. Originality/value - The Institutional repository provides ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad with a central facility for systematic archiving of its "intellectual capital" - the scholarly material of its faculty and research staff. Awareness and availability of the scholarly material of peer faculty enables knowledge sharing. The Institutional Repository is useful to the faculties, research staff and the institution. Management Institutions, especially in India, should be encouraged to develop Institutional Repositories of their intellectual capital and share knowledge. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Introduction
Faculty and research staff in any academic institution develop research materials and scholarly publications. Their research material consists of articles published in magazines, papers published in journals, papers presented at conferences, book reviews, cases prepared, edited books compiled etc. These research materials and scholarly publications which are knowledge intensive can be captured and maintained in an Institutional Repository, so that it enables knowledge sharing and learning.
"A university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members" ([1] Rajashekar, 2005). Institutional repositories may include pre-prints, post-prints, technical reports, working papers, thesis and dissertations, books or chapters of books, research databases, conference proceedings, text, video recordings, teaching materials, digital research materials, etc. ... the intellectual capital of the academic institution.
Knowledge management systems are defined as "IT-based systems developed to support and enhance the organizational processes of knowledge creation, storage/retrieval, transfer and application" ([2] Alavi and Leidner, 2001). The elements of a knowledge management system consist of the organization, intellectual capital, information management and technology.
In context of academic institutions, Branin argues that "more and more faculty and students in a university utilize information technology not only to access information but also to create new intellectual output in digital form" ([3] Branin, 2005). He suggests that the approach to knowledge management is relevant to the implementation of Institutional Repositories that manage a wide range of digital information created in a university.
Open Source Institutional Repository Software help collect, preserve, index and distribute the research material and scholarly publications, that is, the intellectual output of the Faculty and Academic Institution. Some of the popular Open Source Software available for creating and designing institutional repositories are DSpace, Fedora, EPrints, etc. A detailed description of these softwares is given in the Open Software Initiative (OSI) Guide ([4] Crow, 2002).
The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) lists the institutional repositories worldwide according to the software used, content available, countries etc. The Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) lists 259 Institutional Repositories in the USA, 104 Institutional Repositories in UK, 115 Institutional Repositories in Germany and 20 Institutional Repositories in India ([5] Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) (2007). The development of Institutional Repositories in India is still in its infancy as compared to other countries. Of the 20 institutional repositories listed in India, 13 are created using DSpace Digital Repository Software, indicating its popularity as a system software for creation of Institutional Repositories in India.
Need to capture the intellectual capital in management institutions
Faculty of management institutions are activity involved in publishing articles in magazines, research papers in journals, presenting papers at conferences, writing book reviews, preparing cases, etc. This research material and scholarly publications is the "intellectual output" of the faculty of the management institute. Faculty need to store and retain their intellectual assets. They also need to make their work available and visible to others within and outside the institution, while managing their digital rights and maintaining the integrity of their work. There is a need to share all this knowledge created by the faculty in management institutions.
In a developing country like India, there exist a large number of management institutions. There is a growing demand to evaluate the quality of these management institutions. Various organizations along with business magazines, rank the management institutions in India on different parameters through market surveys. Some of the recent surveys are the Business India - Best B-Schools Survey, Outlook - Cfore Survey India's Top B-schools, Indian Management - The Best B-Schools, etc. Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows a comparison of the commonly used parameters in the Outlook - Cfore Survey. It can be observed that the parameter "Intellectual Capital and Faculty" is given the highest weightage. Thus, there exists a need for a mechanism to capture, preserve, retrieve and make visible this intellectual capital of the management institute and enable knowledge sharing.
Institutional Repositories are emerging technologies for capturing intellectual capital, knowledge sharing and management in academic and research institutions, especially in developing countries like India.
There are many management institutions in India, with multiple centres across the country and they differ with the type of infrastructure available, Library facilities, access to e-resources, access to quality scholarly and teaching material. Thus there is a growing need to share the resources primarily within and amongst the management institutions.
The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIM-K) is one of the few Management Institutes in India that has Open Access Institutional Repositories available, showcasing the intellectual output of their faculty and research staff (IIMK - DSpace and Eprints) ([6] DSpace at Indian Institute of Management, 2007; [7] Indian Institute of Management, 2007).
Implementing an Institutional Repository as a tool to capture the intellectual capital and enable knowledge sharing at an Indian Business School was to be explored. A Pilot Institutional Repository was thus to be implemented at the ICFAI Business School (IBS).
ICFAI Business School (IBS)
ICFAI Business School (IBS) offers a two-year full-time campus-based Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (PG-DBA) program. It caters to network of more than 6,000 students, 500 faculties at 18 centers geographically distributed across the country ([8] ICFAI Business School (IBS) (2007). The [9] Outlook - Cfore Survey 2006 India's Top B-Schools, ranks ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad as one of the Top 10 Business Schools overall. It ranks in the top 10 even with respect to intellectual capital and infrastructure ([9] Outlook - Cfore Ranking, 2006).
At IBS, Ahmedabad one of the centers of ICFAI Business School, faculty and research staff are actively involved in publishing articles in magazines, research papers in journals, presenting papers at conferences, writing book reviews, preparing case studies, editing books, etc. Currently this "intellectual capital" is being captured through paper forms called the Annual Research Reports which faculties are required to fill up and submit. Photocopy of the publication/paper is to be attached as proof of publication.
An effort to capture and maintain this intellectual capital by creating a pilot Institutional Repository using the DSpace Open Source Software at the ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad was considered. Before implementing the pilot repository, a survey among the faculty of the business school was conducted. Whether faculty perceived a need for an institutional repository, were ready to share their scholarly materials and contribute to the institutional repository were explored in the survey. The survey also addressed certain aspects associated with the setting up of the institutional repository, like the type of documents the faculties would contribute and management of the institutional repository.
The survey
A survey was conducted at ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad to ascertain the need for an institutional repository and different aspects associated with the setting up of institutional repository. The survey was done through questionnaires with open and closed ended type questions. The questionnaires were distributed among 50 faculty members and 33 faculties responded to it.
Survey sample
The surveyed samples consisted of faculties specializing in different academic areas. Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows the number of faculties that participated in the survey from the different academic disciplines. This indicates a sample with varied academic disciplines and not only from a particular domain area. Table II [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows the number of faculties and the years of teaching experience. It can be observed that majority of the faculties are not very experienced. Availability of the research work and teaching material of the experienced faculty would provide valuable insights to the less experienced faculty.
Need for and use of an institutional repository
The survey aimed at identifying the need for and use of an institutional repository at the management institute. Figure 2 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows the results of the survey, in which majority are of the opinion of that there is a need to have an institutional repository, and that they would use it. The strong agreement for the need and usage of institutional repository suggests that the creation of repository will be helpful for the faculties to share their knowledge and give visibility to their intellectual output.
Type of contribution to the institutional repository
Respondents were asked about the different type of documents which they would like to contribute to the repository. Multiple options were given to choose from. They were articles published, journal papers published, conference/seminar papers presented, scholarly books written by or edited, teaching materials, presentations prepared, technical reports/papers, photographs/images, audio/video materials, others. The results obtained are shown in Figure 3 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]. It is observed that respondents indicate a preference to contribute published material like articles, journal papers and conference papers. Contributing unpublished material like teaching material, presentations, technical reports is less preferred.
Managing the institutional repository
In the current context of the management institute, in order to promote knowledge sharing, usage of the repository and building the seed collection, managing the repository involves converting print formats to digital, assigning keywords, uploading documents, etc. Responsibility of managing the repository has to be assigned to either the information technology (IT) or computer staff, the library staff, faculties or contributors, or should be a joint venture of IT staff, library staff and the contributors. In some cases, special staff are recruited for this by institutions. Respondents were asked to indicate who among these would be best suited for managing the repository.
Figure 4 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows that majority indicate it should be a joint venture between the library, contributors and IT staff; or that special staff should be assigned for managing the repository. A joint effort implied that existing staff would be loaded with extra work, in addition to their usual workload. Having special staff being recruited and trained for the purpose of managing the repository meant more manpower and costs. If rapid development of the repository and continuous updates are a priority for the institution then recruitment of special staff is to be considered.
Implementing the pilot institutional repository DSpace@IBSA
Creation of a pilot institutional repository (DSpace@IBSA) at IBS Ahmedabad was initiated as the survey indicated a strong agreement for the need and usage of an institutional repository. As in any academic institution, funding, infrastructure and manpower were always the initial bottlenecks. Hardware made available for the pilot institutional repository server was a machine with a minimum configuration. A Pentium IV @ 2.4 GHz with 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard disk was to be used as the pilot server.
Though there was a restriction on funding, the availability of Open Source Software for creation of institutional repositories was a deciding factor for the pilot institutional repository. The software considered were the Open Source Linux Operating System, Open Source pre-requisites required for installation and Open Source DSpace Digital Repository system [10] (Doctor and Ramachandran, 2007).
With view of the survey results, it was decided to create a pilot institutional repository with the capture of articles, journal, conference papers initially, later to be extended to teaching materials and other documents. Responsibility of management of the repository was to be a joint venture between the library, contributors and computer staff at the management institute. This institutional repository would emphasise the intellectual output of the individual and the institute.
DSpace@IBSA is being developed with the following objectives:
- Purpose : To collect, preserve the intellectual capital and enhance institutional visibility.
- Content : Contributions of faculty and research staff.
- Users : Faculty, research staff and academicians.
- Culture : Promote a knowledge sharing and open culture.
Phase I: Installation ... getting started with DSpace
DSpace is an open source software developed jointly by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard (HP) for building and managing Digital Repositories. Institutions worldwide use DSpace to meet a variety of digital archiving needs like Institutional Repositories (IRs), eTheses, Digital Preservation, Learning Object Repositories (LORs) and more.
Implementation began according to the best instructions that were found on the DSpace site. The open source development model provided definite advantages. DSpace files could be downloaded from SourceForge. The prerequisites for Dspace installation like Postgres, Ant, Apache Tomcat, and Java are also available for free download. Knowing which files to download, which version have the correct compatibility was difficult to figure out.
System installation was quite complex - no "idiotproof" installation wizards were available. The installation was initially tried using Redhat Enterprise Edition Linux 3.0 , Apache Tomcat 5.5.12 , Apache Ant version 1.6.5 , Java 2 Software Development Kit (SDK) standard edition 1.4.2_04 , Postgres SQL 8.1.2 , Dspace Version 1.3.2 .
There was a struggle trying to install Dspace . Others had also been down this route and advised on the configuration, versions, installation procedures for DSpace .
Eventually, with some help, DSpace installation was successful. The installation was finally successful using Fedora Core 4 Linux , Apache Tomcat 5.5.17 , Apache Ant 1.6.5 , J2EE 1.4 SDK Java platform , Postgres SQL 8.1.3 , Dspace Version 1.3.2 .
Phase II: Configuration
DSpace content is organized into communities; which correspond to a department, research centre or laboratory. These communities can be organized into a hierarchy, and within each community there can be an unlimited number sub-communities and an unlimited number of collections.
The Data Model of Collections and Communities of the Institutional Repository at IBS Ahmedabad is shown in Figure 5 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].
DSpace@IBSA has been configured to include the ICFAI Business School logo, a welcome message and news updates of the institute. As the repository development is in its initial phase, data are, as of now, being entered by library staff, who have been trained with the use of DSpace Institutional Repository Software. DSpace@ IBS Ahmedabad in its initial phase of development was available only on the institute intranet.
Phase III: DSpace @ ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad on the internet
DSpace@IBSA is currently available at: http://202.131.96.39:8080/dspace. A screenshot of the homepage is depicted in Figure 6 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].
The pilot institutional repository is Open Archive Initiative (OAI) enabled and can be harvested by search engines like Google. It is registered at DSpace Instances worldwide ([11] DSpace Instances, n.d.), Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), Cross Archive Search Services for Indian Repositories (CASSIR) ([12] Cross Archive Search Services for Indian Repositories (CASSIR) (n.d.).
As on August 2007, the total collections number 201. The status of various collections now available at DSpace@IBSA is depicted in Figure 7 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].
As the implementation is still in its initial phases and some areas that need to be addressed are populating and maintaining the repository, faculty training, awareness, self archiving and usage of the repository. With the wide range of disciplines available in management, new communities and collections like teaching materials, audio-video resources can be added to enrich the content and visibility of the Institutional Repository.
Future plan
Developing DSpace@IBSA is a continuous learning experience and involved many challenges. Workflow management, Handle Registration ([13] Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) (n.d.), Faculty self-archiving are some of the areas that are slowly being initiated at the pilot Repository. Policies regarding copyrights, acknowledging authorship need to be addressed.
Once the pilot testing is satisfactorily completed at IBS Ahmedabad, there is an ambitious plan to set up institutional repositories of the intellectual capital at all the different IBS centres in India. All the IBS IR repositories would be using Open Source Digital Repository Software and be OAI compliant. This would provide visibility to the intellectual capital of all the individual centres.
Although the capture of IC is important for Business Schools it can be observed from OpenDOAR that only a few Business Schools or Management Institutes have Open Access Institutional Repositories available and are showcasing the intellectual output of their faculty and research staff.
As developing an Institutional Repository provides a means for the Institution to create archives and make available their wealth of knowledge, increase visibility and prestige through exposure to its digital scholarship ... It is hoped that Management Institutions in India will initiate the creation of IRs and promote information sharing within and among the institutions.
1. Rajashekar, T.B. (2005), "Institutional repositories", in Bhogle, S. (Ed.), Turning Pages: Reflections in Info-times, Informatics (India), Bangalore.
2. Alavi, M. and Leidner, D.E. (2001), "Review: knowledge management and knowledge management systems: conceptual foundations and research issues", MIS Quarterly, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 107-36.
3. Branin, J.J. (2005), "Institutional repositories", in Drake, M.A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 237-48, available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/441.
4. Crow, R. (2002), The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper, available at: www.arl.org/sparc/bm ∼ doc/ir_final_release_102.pdf.
5. Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) (2007), available at: www.opendoar.org/ (accessed 8 August 2007).
6. DSpace at Indian Institute of Management (2007), Kozhikode, available at: http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/ (accessed 8 August 2007).
7. Indian Institute of Management (2007), Scholarly Repository, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, available at: http://eprints.iimk.ac.in/ (accessed 8 August 2007).
8. ICFAI Business School (IBS) (2007), available at: www.ibsindia.org (accessed 8 August 2007).
9. Outlook Cfore Ranking (2006), available at: www.ibsindia.org/rankings.asp (accessed 8 August 2007).
10. Doctor, G. and Ramachandran, S. (2007), "Enabling knowledge sharing with an institutional repository", paper presented at the 7th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), available at: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ICALT.2007.138.
11. DSpace Instances (n.d.), available at: http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/DspaceInstances (accessed 8 August 2007).
12. Cross Archive Search Services for Indian Repositories (CASSIR) (n.d.), available at: http://ardb4.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/oai/ (accessed 8 August 2007).
13. Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) (n.d.), available at: http://roar.eprints.org/ (accessed 8 August 2007).
About the authors
Gayatri Doctor is a Faculty, Information Technology & Systems at ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad, India. She has eight years of academic experience and has been a visiting faculty at Gujarat Vidyapeeth and Gujarat University. She has eight years of industrial experience having worked with WIPRO Infotech and the INFLIBNET Programme of University Grants Commission. She holds a Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA), MPhil in Information Technology and is currently pursuing her PhD. Her areas of interest are databases, repositories and knowledge management. Gayatri Doctor is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Smitha Ramachandran is an Electrical and Electronics Engineer with an MBA in Finance and Marketing. Currently, she is working as Senior Faculty Associate at ICFAI Business School Research Centre, Ahmedabad. She was associated with IT industry in the areas of software application development and software language training. Her areas of interest are information systems, operations management, quantitative methods and analysis and security analysis and derivatives market.
Gayatri Doctor, ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad, India
Smitha Ramachandran, ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad, India
Figure 1: A comparative weightage of the different parameters used for "Ranking"
Figure 2: Need for and usage of institutional repository
Figure 3: Types of contributions to the institutional repository
Figure 4: Managing the institutional repository
Figure 5: Collections and communities at DSpace@IBS Ahmedabad
Figure 6: Home page of the DSpace@IBSA
Figure 7: Collections at DSpace@IBSA
Table I: Academic area
Table II: Teaching experience
Copyright Emerald Group Publishing Limited 2008