Current Trends in Institutional Repositories for Institutions Offering Master's and Baccalaureate Degrees Jingfeng Xia and David B. Opperman Available online 16 December 2009 This article describes the current practices of institutional repositories at master's and baccalaureate institutions (M&BIs) in the United States. The focus includes repository content composition, operational style, development history, and accessibility. The research studies a group of institutional repositories through the analysis of their content elements. The article also discusses important management issues and identifies challenges. This research can provide a valuable resource to other libraries of similar type and size for the planning and implementation of new repositories, as well as assess the current environment of institutional repositories. Serials Review 2010; 36:10–18. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Open access; Institutional repositories; Library publishing; Scholarly communication; Publishing models Introduction Institutional repositories have existed nearly a decade. Large-sized academic libraries were the early adopters, and their early development focused on the accumulation, preservation and dissemination of faculty research output in an openly accessible way. In the past few years, medium- and small-sized institutions, mostly non-doctoral granting, started planning and implementing repositories in support of the scholarly communications process. Because of a dissimilarity in goals and mission, the repositories implemented by master's and baccalaureate institutions tend to emphasize teaching materials and student works more than research universities do. Also, these types of institutions and their libraries find that resource availability issues, such as limited budget, personnel and technology, have created alternative strategies for repository operations. This article describes the current practices of institutional repositories at master's and baccalaureate institutions (M&BIs) with particular focus on the following characteristics of these institutional repositories: • Content Composition: How do the various institutions studied define an “institutional repository” as reflected by their content? What categories of materials do these repositories contain? Who are the major contributors? • Operational Style: Who maintains the repositories — individual institutions, commercial vendors, consortia or shared repository services? Which platforms do the repositories use? • Development History: When were the repositories established? • Accessibility: Do these repositories provide open access? Are items available in full text? The purpose of this research is to present an overall picture of institutional repository development by medium- to small-sized academic libraries as a valuable resource to other libraries of similar type and size for the planning and implementation of future repositories. Some important issues in repository practices are discussed in depth to understand the primary challenges in repository development and to identify possible solutions. The authors of this study foresee the importance of this research based upon the fact that only a small percentage of such libraries have conducted a needs assessment in the planning and pilot-testing stage. 1 Yet, they all are curious about the experiences of other repositories. Unfortunately, the institutional repository literature has not offered enough studies in this area of focus. Literature Review One of the earliest explorations on repositories of non-doctoral granting institutions was a survey among liberal arts colleges by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) in 2005. 2 Clifford Lynch and Joan Lippincott found that these repositories “have strong commitments to locally created materials for teaching and learning or that document student research.” Although most of these systems were at the initial stage of repository imple- mentation or only at the planning stage at the time this survey was taken, the researchers anticipated a possible increase of repository contents of student portfolios and electronic theses and dissertations. Two years later, scholars at the University of Michigan received funding for a similar survey through an IMLS grant (Institute of Xia is Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA; e-mail: xiaji@iupui.edu. Opperman is enrolled in the Master of Library Science degree program, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA; e-mail: dbopperm@iupui.edu. 0098-7913/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2009.10.003 10