Institutional Repositories and Digitisation in Libraries: Succor and Challenges of Access to Grey Literature

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology has democratised access to information through the Internet. However, in Nigeria, a lot of relevant information available in grey literature like theses, annual reports, musical collections, old newspapers, government documents, inaugural reports, datasets to mention but a few, are still inaccessible to researchers because they are obscured owing to the fact that they are available in hard copies only in libraries and archives. As a succor to literature obscurity, librarians and archivists globally have resulted to digitising grey literature and providing access to them through Institutional Repositories (IRs). Thus, this paper used an exploratory research design to describe the concept of digitisation and the relevance of digitisation and IRs in providing access to grey literature. It also analysed the grey literature that are curated and accessible on the IRs. It highlighted the number of IRs with grey literature and the types of grey literature available on them. Findings indicated that out of the twelve (12) university IRs in Nigeria registered on OpenDOAR, only eight (8) had grey literature that are available and accessible. The types of grey literature available on the IRs include theses, government documents, manuscripts, public lectures, to mention a few. Of these outputs, only one IR had up to four (4) types of grey literature that can be accessed. The challenges of digitisation and use of repositories in archives and libraries in Nigeria were also discussed. The recommendations made include the synergy between archives and universities to digitise and provide access to more scholarly grey literature.