On the Cost and Benefits of Building a High-Quality Institutional Repository

Much has been written about the difficulties of getting staff and students to contribute to an Institutional Repository (IR). The most difficult objections of staff to deal with are lack of time, and uncertainty about the benefits. We report on the measures that we have taken when building an IR to address those objections, indicating which were successful and which failed. We then propose a set of parameters to capture the quality, cost, and benefits of maintaining an IR in a quantitative manner, using the parameters to compare three IR. Our proposal is a first step towards a more objective approach towards evaluating IR.