ePubs: the Council's Institutional Repository

Project Background

The Library Committee sponsored the ePublication Archive (link opens in a new window) project with the aim of achieving an archive of published work containing the full text where feasible. The feasibility study, which was carried out from January to March 2003, showed that there was a business need for this service within the Council and additionally that the available free software was not suitable for our requirements.

We chose to develop an in-house system using standard components including Oracle and Apache Cocoon. This has been available externally since May 2004.

Functionality and data

Data can be retrieved using the search interface or the many browse indices, these include year, author and journal title.

There are over 21000 records, with approximately 400 full text, dating back to the mid-1960s.

Advocacy and External contacts

We have demonstrated the system to over six different institutions from JISC, the British Library, Manney publishers, Universities of Bristol and Southampton and BioMedCentral. It has been recognised as a well designed system with a large amount of data in it.

External uses

The ePubs system has been indexed by Google and Google Scholar. It has been recognised as a high quality resource by Thomson ISI (provider of information resources including Web of Knowledge) and has been selected for Current Web Contents using rigorous criteria.

If you would like more information please contact the project team via epublications@rl.ac.uk