With support from EIFL, the National Library of Armenia (NLA) has improved access to its digital materials - open access Armenian theses and dissertations, books and the Bulletin of Armenian Libraries - through the creation of a new repository.

The new repository, which uses DSpace 7.3 software, will be part of national open science infrastructure currently under development by the Ministry of Education and Science, which is also drafting a national open science policy. 

“With the implementation of DSpace 7.3, the NLA is now a leader in development and use of institutional repositories in Armenia, and has the opportunity to influence the development of open science in the country’s other institutions,” said Anna Chulyan, Director of the NLA and EIFL’s Country Coordinator in Armenia.

Populating the new repository

A team of seven NLA librarians is now transferring thousands of digital files, including theses, dissertations and abstracts from a previous repository to the new DSpace repository. The NLA is also populating the open access repository with their own publications as well as Armenian books that are out of copyright.

This work of populating the new repository is ongoing - at the time of writing, there were almost 2,000 items in the repository, with the number growing day by day.

Training to encourage open access repository development

To further encourage development of open access repositories in Armenian institutions, NLA organized workshops for librarians.

A two-day workshop on management of institutional open access repositories using DSpace software was organized for 24 librarians from MINERVA project partner institutions that already have DSpace open access repositories (Armenia State University of Economics, Yerevan Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences, Yerevan State Medical University, and Yerevan State University).

The NLA now regularly acts as a consultation centre on DSpace 7 for all institutions in Armenia that use DSpace, are in the process of installing DSpace, or who plan to form institutional repositories. Questions range from technical issues related to installation and configuration to content-related issues dealing with bibliographic description and understanding metadata.

More about EIFL’s contribution to open access in Armenia.