Scholarly Communication via Institutional Repositories: A Ghanaian Perspective

ABSTRACT Institutional repositories have emerged as a reliable platform for showcasing intellectual outputs of academic institutions due to their inherent benefits. Despite the embrace of this concept, issues of their sustainability have come up as a result of the attrition of some repositories, especially in developing countries giving rise to the call to ascertain the significant issues regarding how repositories are set up and managed in the Ghanaian context. This study, using the comparative case study design, guided by the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, assesses how institutional repositories are created and sustainably managed for use by the academic communities of two private and two public universities in Ghana. It gathers data 37 respondents whose activities cover the operations of these repositories through semi-structured interview of respondents as well as observation of repository policy documents and the websites hosting the repositories. The thematically-analyzed data reveals that even though some academic institutions in Ghana have seen the worth of online digital institutional repositories in advancing scholarly communication; and have therefore developed same for this purpose, the needed involvement of key personalities on campus to create a wider acceptance of the concept by the general university community is missing. There are instances of repository development without sound policy frameworks. These lead to low material submission and low content access rate. The study thus recommends active and continuous engagement of the various interest groups within academic institutions in the management of the repositories to bring about an appreciable level of buy-in as well as the institution or strengthening of repository policies to address peculiar issues of the academic environment. Again, education on copyright issues should be offered to lecturers and other content producers in order to allow for material submission without infringing on any copyright laws. This should be done alongside juicy motivational packages to encourage more submissions. Above all, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH), which has been championing the many digital initiatives of libraries in the country, should think of instituting a national research repository

Keeping our story: Preservation of audio visual archives in Ghana

ABSTRACT To find out the state and challenges of preserving audio visual archives in Ghana.The study was qualitative. In depth interviews were used to obtain data used for analysis. Data used for analysis were obtained from eight (8) respondents comprising of staff of the AV archives in the University of Ghana Library System and the J.H Nketia AV archives in Ghana. Data obtained have been analyzed and presented under major themes. A key finding of the study was that although there was a fair degree of operational direction for the preservation of AV collections, both units studied were faced with a number of challenges as far the effective and efficient preservation of collections held were concerned.This study contributes to the extent to which AV archives are preserved in Ghana. It serves as a wakeup call to management of AV archives who do not consider good preservation practices high on their agenda to rethink their positions.Finally, this study will fill the gap in the literature as the search for literature on preservation of AV archives produced very little in terms of relevance in the context of AV archives in Ghana.It informs the government and appropriate institutions on how to provide conducive environment for Audio visual collections to help safeguard our past memorie

Scholarly Communication via Institutional Repositories: A Ghanaian Perspective

ABSTRACT Institutional repositories have emerged as a reliable platform for showcasing intellectual outputs of academic institutions due to their inherent benefits. Despite the embrace of this concept, issues of their sustainability have come up as a result of the attrition of some repositories, especially in developing countries giving rise to the call to ascertain the significant issues regarding how repositories are set up and managed in the Ghanaian context. This study, using the comparative case study design, guided by the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, assesses how institutional repositories are created and sustainably managed for use by the academic communities of two private and two public universities in Ghana. It gathers data 37 respondents whose activities cover the operations of these repositories through semi-structured interview of respondents as well as observation of repository policy documents and the websites hosting the repositories. The thematically-analyzed data reveals that even though some academic institutions in Ghana have seen the worth of online digital institutional repositories in advancing scholarly communication; and have therefore developed same for this purpose, the needed involvement of key personalities on campus to create a wider acceptance of the concept by the general university community is missing. There are instances of repository development without sound policy frameworks. These lead to low material submission and low content access rate. The study thus recommends active and continuous engagement of the various interest groups within academic institutions in the management of the repositories to bring about an appreciable level of buy-in as well as the institution or strengthening of repository policies to address peculiar issues of the academic environment. Again, education on copyright issues should be offered to lecturers and other content producers in order to allow for material submission without infringing on any copyright laws. This should be done alongside juicy motivational packages to encourage more submissions. Above all, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH), which has been championing the many digital initiatives of libraries in the country, should think of instituting a national research repository