Planning Checklist

Planning checklists are a useful mechanism to use to ensure that all the key issues have been considered when planning and setting up a repository. The checklists provided here are offered as a series of key questions designed to 'make you think'. This page provides a master index to all checklists, however, sub sections of these have been integrated into the appropriate pages elsewhere within the kit.

Planning repositories

• Do you have a clear understanding of why you want an institutional repository and what you expect to get from it?
• Do you understand the concept of open access and what benefits an institutional repository can bring to both research and teaching?
• Have you sought the views and support of the institution's senior management?
• Have you defined your vision and initial goals?
• Have you outlined and documented the purpose and drivers for institutional repository establishment in your institution?
• Have you decided how to position your institutional repository within your wider information environment?
• What is the target content of the repository? This could include research papers and data, electronic theses, as well as teaching and learning resources
• Have you completed a stakeholder analysis? Stakeholders are those people with a vested interest in how the repository represents the institution, and themselves, to the world. In the case of an institutional repository, stakeholders will include senior institutional managers, departmental leaders, and those who are expected to contribute content
• Considering the type of content your institutional repository will contain have you consulted your academic community to explore their current practice and method of dealing with these materials?
• Do any of your Departments already have a repository or other digital stores of publications? How will you manage duplication, transfer of resources and metadata, and, perhaps, the closure of the Departmental repository?
• Have you identified and briefed your project champion - a senior member of staff who will support your institutional repository project?
• Have you considered matters to do with governance and reporting and how you might ensure the active involvement of representatives of the academic community in the development of the repository
• Have you established an institutionally representative working group?
• Have you identified extant skills and personnel within the institution to call upon for advice and input? And have you let them know what you are planning?
• Have you defined roles and responsibilities for your institutional repository development?
• Have you made financial arrangements to support institutional repository work in the short/medium/long term?
• What sort of statistics and management reports will you want from your institutional repository?
• Have you prepared a business plan for the establishment and development of the institutional repository?
• Have you decided who will be responsible for the repository and where it will be located in the institution's organisational structure?
• Have you undertaken a cost-benefit analysis and estimated what staff and other resources will be required?

Setting up the repository

• Have you properly and fully specified the requirements of your repository?
• Where and who will host the repository?
• What are the pros and cons of using open source software and is it for you?
• Have you considered buying in the software and/or the support?
• What is the anticipated growth of your repository? Does your technical architecture support that growth?
• Have you considered a service level? Will the repository be available 24/7? Will the users expect it to be?
• How much do you want to customise the software - look and feel, metadata store and Web interfaces?
• Are you running a pilot project or a production service? If the former, who, when, if and how will it transfer to a production service?
• Who will answer support/help desk queries relating to the repository?
• Have you created a requirements document that sets out the specifications you require from the chosen system?
• Have you compared repository software to find which best fulfil the requirements?
• Which repository software will best serve the identified requirements? Do you want to use open source software, free to obtain but requires local support? Or paid-for repository services hosted elsewhere? Or a mixture of local support and bought custom services as needed?
• What are the platform requirements for your chosen software? Must it run on Windows, or is a Linux server supported?
• Does the technical support team have any programming requirements? Some repository software has administrator interfaces that reduce programming requirements
• Have you installed and configured your software?
• Have you considered how to integrate your software with other systems within the institution?
• What other systems and services might the repository be required to share information with? This is often referred to as 'interoperability'. As well as OAI, this is also likely to embrace Web services standards, including Web 2.0, digital library systems and other institutional and personal information systems
• Have you registered your institutional repository with external services to facilitate harvesting?
• Have you decided if and how you will collect usage and item download statistics for your repository? Will you use a tool built into your chosen repository, or an external tool or repository add-on?
• Have you decided how your institutional repository users will be authenticated?
• Is the repository budget sufficient to achieve the technical requirements?
• How will you get data out of the repository when the next best thing comes along?
• Do you have sufficient backup capability and capacity for your repository?
• Have you considered who has suitable skills to perform a repository installation?
• Have you considered who has suitable skills to perform a repository customisation (metadata, input forms, collection creation etc)?
• Have you considered who has suitable skills to perform repository look and feel customisation (graphic skills, corporate branding)?
• Do you know who has access to the systems that you might want to integrate with (for example local password and authentication systems)?
• Have you considered how you will document and store your installation and customisation details for future reference?

Legal and Policy Framework

• Do you have an institution wide IPR policy?
• Have you done a risk assessment?
• Does your institution have an information management strategy?

Metadata and Workflow

• Have you defined your metadata requirements and set up an appropriate schema?
• Have you checked your metadata meets the required standards for interoperability?
• Have you considered the workflows within your institutional repository and set up appropriate mechanisms to deal with incoming content?

Preservation

• Which digital formats can the repository commit to preserve in the longer-term? Is the repository collecting author source formats?
• Is there a viable action plan for monitoring the formats stored in the repository and the preservation risks associated with those formats? Do you know which tools are available to do this?
• Should the repository look to outsource preservation action services?

Maintaining the repository

• Have you considered how your repository may grow over the next year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, and do you have sufficient storage space for such growth, or a means to acquire new storage?
• Have you budgeted maintenance time for staff to maintain your repository technical infrastructure?
• Do you know who will look out for announcements of new versions to test and upgrade?
• Who will provide ongoing technical support for day to day technical issues that might arise?
• Does the budget for the repository support all requirements identified for sustainability?