Repositorios digitales en medicina: fortalezas, oportunidades, retos y amenazas

The University of Barcelona (UB ‘Universidad de Barcelona’) is aware of how important is the preservation and accessing to its own digital resources. With this aim, The Resource Centre for Learning and Research (CRAI ‘Centre de Recursos per a l’ Aprenentatge i l’Investigació’) has started to make available to the public the UB Digital Repository. This repository is added to the ones offered by the Catalonian University Libraries Consortium (CBUC ‘Consorcio de las Bibiliotecas Universitarias de Cataluña): Doctoral Thesis online (TDX ‘Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa’), Research grey literature (RECERCAT ‘Dipòsit de la Recerca de Catalunya’), Open access Catalonian Magazines (RACO ‘Revistas Catalanas en Accés Obert’) and Digital Report of Catalonia (Memòria digital de Catalunya). Each of them has different aims and the Medicine Library that belongs to the UB’s CRAI has helped with measures for the incorporation of diverse digital and digitalised data into the institutional collective repositories. In this paper we want to analyse the mediator’s role played by libraries, the opportunity for vitalising the repositories and in consequence improve the visibility (community projection) of our institution’s authors and creators. Based on our experience at the Medicine Library and related literature, we propose to make an approximation to the strengths (well planned repositories, qualified professionals), opportunities (use of the Information and Communications Technology, freedom of edition) and possible dangers (dispersal of original works in external repositories, deficient distribution, reluctance from some sectors, excessive dependency in the self-archiving, etc.). In short, to offer a guide for Digital Repository development and face the challenge successfully