An Institutional Repository (IR) in the context of a higher education institution can be defined as a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital academic/research materials (excluding work of administrative or commercial nature) created by the institution and its community members. The set of services includes the collection, storage and preservation in digital format, and retrieval of items submitted to the institutional repository.

In addition to centrally preserve all intellectual output by researchers at the University, this repository will also help improve the:

• Visibility
• Usage and
• Impact of research conducted by University of Lagos researchers on the world out there.

It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution. (Lynch, 2003).
 

THE MAIN OBJECTIVES OF INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY

• To create global visibility for an Institution's scholarly research
• To provide open access to the Institution's research output by self-archiving it.
• To store and preserve other institutional digital assets, including unpublished or otherwise easily lost (grey) literature (e.g. theses or technical reports).
• To collect content in a single location

At EITC, we develop and manage Institutional Repositories for academic institutions using DSpace.

We have successfully implemented the DSpace for the following academic Institutions in Nigeria:

1. Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria

2. University of Lagos, Nigeria

3. Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

4. University of Ibadan, Nigeria