Presented by Irene Onyancha at Dspace Ethiopia Interest Group Meeting and Training, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 28 October – 1 November 2013.

1. Unites Nations
Economic Commission of Africa
Open Access Publishing:
The ECA Institutional Repository
Ms. Irene Onyancha
Chief Librarian, Knowledge and Library Services Section (KLSS)
Public Information and Knowledge Management Services Division
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

2. ECA
Overview
Context – ECA’s vision and programmes
Open Access publishing at ECA
Status of ECA publication before 2010
Vision for the ECA Publications
Towards the vision:
Defining ECA IR project
Implementing the ECA IR project
Customization of the ECA IR
Populating the ECA IR
Accessing ECA IR items and files
Use and Impact, challenges and solution
Lessons Learnt & recommendations
On-going development
Publications & Conference poster

3. ECA
ECA’s Mandate
The Economic Commission of Africa:
established 1958
one of the UN Secretariat's five regional commissions
5 Sub-Regional Offices (SROs): Morocco, Niger,
Rwanda, Zambia & Cameroon
to promote economic and social development, foster intra-regional
to promote economic and social development, foster intra-regional
integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's
integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's
development
development

4. ECA
Publishing at ECA
ECA’s knowledge is presented in:
Flagship publications
Conference proceedings, Resolutions & Speeches
Technical publications, policy briefs, mission reports,
annual reports, working papers et.
other grey literature
Statistical data
Geospatial data
all which outline important research or decisions that have
been made on the economic and social developmental aspects
in Africa

5. ECA
The status of ECA publications before 2009
Staff computers
Divisional Collections
Library basement
Electronic copies
ECA Web sites
Library shelves
Catalogued collection
ECA publications

6. ECA
Vision for ECA publications
ECA-HQ
SRO-WA SRO-NA SRO-SA SRO-EA
Cataloguing
Cataloguing
IR Wiki
IR-Blog
Self-archiving
Self-archiving
ODS
ODS
Dublin Core
Dublin Core
Unqualified
Unqualified
Cataloguing interface
Cataloguing interface
Archival
Archival
Storage
Storage
Data
Data
Management
Management
Metadata
Metadata
Export
Export
Qualified DC/
Qualified DC/
(AGRIS AP)
(AGRIS AP)
Access interface Search Engine
ECollections
UN Depository Libraries
MARC21
MARC21

7. ECA
Vision for ECA publications
ECA-HQ
SRO-WA SRO-NA SRO-SA SRO-EA
Cataloguing
Cataloguing
IR Wiki
IR-Blog
Self-archiving
Self-archiving
ODS
ODS
Dublin Core
Dublin Core
Unqualified
Unqualified
Cataloguing interface
Cataloguing interface
Archival
Archival
Storage
Storage
Data
Data
Management
Management
Metadata
Metadata
Export
Export
Qualified DC/
Qualified DC/
(AGRIS AP)
(AGRIS AP)
Access interface Search Engine
ECollections
UN Depository Libraries
MARC21
MARC21

8. ECA
The ECA Institutional Repository
ECA IR
Established in 2009:
..is an electronic publishing means for
collecting, managing and preserving the
institutional memory of ECA. It offers timely
dissemination of this wealth of knowledge
outlining important socio- economic
research and decisions made on Africa…
Highly customized to provide value added services
19, 0000 metadata records & 15,000 digital files
Project on going

9. ECA
Defining the ECA IR project: Critical activities
Defining the Institutional Repository Project
Project documents: Concept note, proposal and Business Plan
Funding
Preliminary activities
Setting up a project team
Recruitment of project staff (20 Library Assistants)
Contracting a Service provider for the IR platform development
Purchase of equipments
Heavy duty scanners
Servers & Computers
Storage and Archival materials

10. ECA
Implementing the ECA IR project
Defining workflows
Capturing of documents before 2009 and After
Build on project 2007 to catalogue Parliamentary documents
Collecting cataloging  indexing & reviewing  scanning Archiving
4 groups of Library assistant
Collection development
Printed publications
Digital collection
•
digitally born & digitization
Online platform development
Software selection & development of systems requirement
Review of IR Open Source Software & comparative analysis @:
http://www.rsp.ac.uk/

11. ECA
Customization of the ECA IR
Customization: 1. Authority lists(Author, Conference, Geo codes etc.)

12. ECA
Customization of the ECA IR cont.
Customization: 2. Controlled vocabularies (UNBIS Thesaurus)

13. ECA
Customization of the ECA IR cont.
Customization: 3. AGRIS AP Metadata
MARC21-AGRIS AP
Crosswalk
AGRIS AP in Dspace

14. ECA
Customization of the ECA IR cont.
Customization: 4. Subject search: UNBIS SC & Thesaurus

15. ECA
Customization of the ECA IR cont.
Customization: 5. User Performance Statistics

16. ECA
Towards vision 2013: Populating the IR
Export and Import of MARC21 metadata
A crosswalk between MARC21 and AGRIS AP (Qualified Dublin
Core)
Export file from HORIZON ILMS in MARC21 XML Schema
Import tool developed by @mire
Communities and Collections development
12 communities and 21 collection based on the ECA’s work
programme
1 community and 5 collections for ECA sub-regional offices
Uploading digital files
All digital files saved with the accession number of the metadata
records
Dspace submission workflow revision to allow imported records back
into the Dspace workflow

17. ECA
The ECA IR @
http://repository.uneca.org

18. ECA
Towards vision 2013: Accessing the IR items & files
Searching
Simple Search
Advanced search using the AGRIS AP fields
Subject search
Browsing
Dspace out of the box features (title, date & Communities and collections
Subject keyword browse (UNBIS thesaurus)
Thematic collections of ECA conferences & Flagship publications
Discovery Feature: Dspace 1.8
Harvesting
OAI-PMH (simple DC)
Expose metadata using in many formats Simple DC and AGRIS AP,
MODS, METS for specialized harvesters

19. ECA
The ECA IR: Use and impact
80,000 hits/month
Top 10 countries include: USA, SA, Nigeria

20. ECA
Challenges of Access and Use
Difficulty in downloading documents esp. in Africa
Connectivity & bandwidth issues
Poor participation & access by ECA SROs
at:Niamey, Rabat, Kigali, Zambia, Yaounde
Main Challenges
Lack of skills at the SRO libraries
Inadequate infrastructure & lack of essential equipment
Connectivity/Bandwidth issues

21. ECA
Solution: Replication/Mirroring of ECA IR
A pragmatic approach in increasing usage of
the ECA IR in Africa
Replication/mirrors
Off-line synchronization
IR replication project to mirroring the ECA IR:
Initially at the 5 sub-regional offices
Prototypes tested
Replicates are ready for shipment to SROs
All institutions/Universities across Africa
• “ECA IR in a Box ” to be accessed off-Line

22. ECA
Lessons Learnt
The timely availability of the project documents crucial in acquiring
project funding;
Level of funding determines the level implementation and
sustainability;
Availability of in-house expertise is very important
Facilitate customization & Avoid recurring expenses for external services
Services of an experienced service provider was central to the timely
implementation of the project;
Good planning and teamwork was very critical for the success of the
project.
Migration of data from existing systems to IR software i.e. Dspace
Use of qualified Dublin Core metadata set for data input and harvesting
from Dspace software
Integration of controlled vocabularies for data entry and value added
services e.g. subject search & browse — towards “open linked data”
Poor internet connectivity across Africa is a big challenge to access
ECA IR resources --- IR replication & off-line synchronization
Need to incorporate sustainability strategies in project planning

23. ECA
On-going developments
Completion and adoption of deposition and related policies
Project on-going to ensure all ECA publications are
accessed
Implementation of the 5 replicates at the SROs
Dissemination strategy: All institutions & Universities across
Africa
• “ECA IR in a Box” to be accessed off-Line
Development of a Multilingual Repository (En & Fr)
Funds available Request for Proposal (RFP) being sent out
Improved Statistics: country level stats
Marketing/dissemination strategy:
ECA IR in a box
Linked to as many websites
Google ranking
Continuity and disaster recovery – part of ECA IT strategy

24. ECA
The benefits the ECA IR
Systematic collection, management, preservation and
dissemination of ECA intellectual property
Accessibility of ECA’s knowledge through a large number
of sources (e.g. portals, aggregators and search engines);
Greater visibility has increased the impact of ECA work in
the continent
A vast amount of information that was difficult to obtain will
be freely accessible;
Mirrors will facilitate better access across Africa
An information resource for the ASKIA/AVLIN networks
and other online portals for African content.

25. ECA
Publications & Conference Posters
Addressing institutional potential loss of records and knowledge
. (September 2012), International Library and Information
Review, Vol. 44, Issue 3, Pg. 115-180.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105723171200
Improving access to socio-economic knowledge in Africa:
The ECA IR Replication Project. (2012), Presented at
Berlin-10 Conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7xOAhVFUYA

26. ECA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1.
2.
3.
ECA SENIOR MANAGEMENT
IR PROJECT STAFF
KLSS STAFF

27. ECA
THANK YOU!!!