Institutional repositories in Kenya: The case of the Kenya Library and Information Services Consortium member Libraries.

Abstract

Billions of shillings worth of domestic researches are conducted every year in Kenya, end up in library shelves and office drawers in the institutions and are rarely disseminated. As a result, immediate steps must be taken to share the research output for development. A major recent innovation in research sharing within the domain of libraries is institutional repositories. In 2011, cumulatively of over 65% of libraries in Kenya had embraced or were in the process of establishing digital repositories in their institutions while 35% had not. This study aimed at establishing the current status of institutional repositories in Kenya.This study used Diffusion of innovation Theory (DOI) to develop a theoretical framework to guide the study and mixed method design to collect and analyze data from sample of 111 Institutional repository administrators purposively sampled. SoGoSurvey, an online platform was used to collect and analyze the results real-time as received from respondents. It also presented the analyzed data in tables, totals, percentages, charts and graphs. The findings revealed that the Kenyan Government had a stake for the successes of the implementation of digital institutional repositories since majority of libraries in KLISC were government institutions. The findings also showed that digital repositories were managed by librarians in different library departments and not necessarily digital repository librarians. The high rate of repository managers with other designations was also a clear sign that repository management had not acquired a fully recognized professional status in Kenya. In addition, the results indicated that although majority of KLISC member libraries had established or were in the process of establishing institutional repositories, there were still a sizable number of libraries that are yet to develop institutional repositories.
Key Words: Institutional Repositories, Libraries, Consortium