Metadata Implementation for Building Cross-Institutional Repositories: Lessons Learned from the Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository (LASR)

Institutional repositories are an exciting innovation in scholarly communication and liberal arts institutions have a unique opportunity to create repository collections that reflect their tradition. However, the challenges of cost, staffing, infrastructure, standardized metadata, and content recruitment that are part and parcel of developing institutional repositories may be daunting to individual liberal arts institutions. The idea that multiple, like-minded institutions could join forces to share their efforts, unique challenges, and maximize their efficiencies grew into the Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository (LASR). Initial steps in this collaboration included the development of a group mission and a statement of collection policies. Technical specifications and metadata best practices were developed to facilitate searching and to ensure the interoperability of the repository. This article outlines the history of the project and the process of collaborating on metadata standards