Institutional Repositories—Strategies for the Present and Future

Institutional repositories can create exciting possibilities for scholarly communication with access, discovery, and permanency for the intellectual capital of a university. Digital research repositories capture student and faculty research and allow publishing opportunities for electronic journals in an open access environment. Western Kentucky University launched TopSCHOLARtm in May 2007 and is reaping benefits from the decision to contract with an established publishing platform, bepress\u27 Digital Commons. Institutional Repositories are intended to create an alternative publishing model, enhance scholarly communication, showcase an institution\u27s intellectual output, and preserve and provide access to an institution\u27s digital assets. What are strategies and challenges involved in launching and populating an IR using Western Kentucky University as an example