In many instances organisations find it a challenge to start and manage visible and sustainable repositories. The visibility and interoperability of repositories is an important step in the continuous provision of open access materials. The JISC is a United Kingdom public body whose role is to support higher education and research by providing leadership in the use of ICT in learning, teaching and research. The Repository Support Project (RSP) is a project established by JISC to building repository capacity, knowledge and skills within UK institutions.

Repository Support Project Model

It was realised early among the UK institutions covered by JISC that while some institutions are in the advanced stages of establishing well managed repositories the deployment of repositories is still patchy and many institutions do not have the expertise, resources or confidence to address the repository agenda without external encouragement and support.

In order to support these institutions the RSP activities are grouped into two ‘starting a repository’ and ‘maintaining a Repository’

It was realised early among the UK institutions covered by JISC that while some institutions are in the advanced stages of establishing well managed repositories the deployment of repositories is still patchy and many institutions do not have the expertise, resources or confidence to address the repository agenda without external encouragement and support. In order to support these institutions the RSP activities are grouped into two ‘starting a repository’ and ‘maintaining a Repository’

Support is each case is provided in 4 broad themes:

• Technical: software selection and installation, technologies, metadata, interoperability
• Organisational: staffing, business requirements and incentives, copyright clearance and digital rights management
• Repository management: policies, workflows, archiving and preservation
• Advocacy: advocating to different stakeholders and advising on advocacy within institutions

Support for Agricultural Repositories

In an endeavor to support agricultural communities the AIMS team through the provides agricultural communities advice on agricultural metadata, good metadata publishing tools and also sharing of experiences in building agricultural repositories. Interested users can register online.