2019 Charleston Library Conference

Partnering consortia, PALNI (the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) and PALCI (the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium) are collaborating to produce an affordable, open-source, collaborative institutional repository solution based on the Hyku software. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the British Library is piloting a shared repository service with several museums and cultural heritage organizations using the same software. An institutional repository (IR) provides libraries, museums and the academic community a place to capture, preserve, and make accessible the important research, special collections, and other types of information they create. Libraries, campuses, and museums benefit from having the infrastructure and tools provided in an IR solution to manage assets and disseminate them to the larger public. However, many libraries do not have an institutional repository. Findings from a PALNI environmental scan showed 70% of the PALNI members did not have an IR solution due to cost, inefficiency, or overly-rigid solutions. In addition, trends toward market consolidation have further limited libraries’ choice of vended IR software solutions.

This session will describe a project funded in-part by IMLS to further develop the multi-tenant Hyku IR software and to create a new model for ultra low-cost hosting, discovery, and access to digital material. Presenters will describe the opportunities that present themselves when consortia step outside of their normal boundaries and collaborate more broadly with other consortia, coordinate across projects, and partner with commercial partners to create community-owned open source solutions. Attendees will learn how the consortial IR service developed in Hyku will allow individual libraries to customize and brand an IR as their own, while scaling to serve multiple consortia simultaneously, reaping the benefits of sharing the underlying infrastructure, hosting, and administration costs across institutions.