ORBi is approaching the 18,000 reference mark, 72% of which are in full text.
More important than the number of entries is the number of full texts. Indeed, the University could content itself with a simple bibliographical index which would give it access to the titles and simple metadata of the scientific production of its researchers, but would then miss the opportunity to make the real material accessible to all who may be interested. To make this type of access available to all, it is absolutely indispensible that the content be complete, even embellished by complementary data of various kinds (gross data, photos, videos, audio recordings, etc.) and that the search engines be able to find the keywords within the texts themselves, which must thus be entirely visible.
We can pride ourselves on having developed the technology necessary for ORBi to function as well as on having convinced most to participate even if many were reticent at the beginning. Those who have made the commitment fully realize today how easy it is to continue feeding the repository as they continue to publish.
We can also be proud of the professionalism with which the Library Network team took on the task. The quality of their work can be clearly felt. Unlike many universities, which ask their library, temporary and student workers to do the encoding according to information provided by researchers in paper format, we allowed those most concerned to be responsible for their own encoding (which they did when they realized that they were indeed the most concerned). Many institutions hardly reach the mark of 20% of documents in full text, spend a huge amount of money doing so, and encounter little success. There is also the danger that encoders run out of steam and researchers get discouraged. Our approach, even if less popular with researchers at the beginning, has proved to be effective for everyone concerned.
According to the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), the University of Liege occupies the 54th position among the 802 known institutional repositories in terms of the total number of references (this is an objective ranking, based on a single and thus acceptable criterion).
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« It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge and to diffuse it, not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures, but far and wide ».
(Daniel Coit Gilman, first President, Johns Hopkins University, 1878)
« An institutional repository …
• fulfils a university’s mission to engender, encourage and disseminate scholarly work;
• gathers a complete record of its intellectual effort;
• provides a permanent record of all digital output;
• acts as a research management tool;
• is a marketing tool for universities;
• provides maximum Web impact for the institution ».
(Alma Swan, Key Perspectives, 2009)