Chapter 6 summary

Search engines

Via which channels is the digital repository searchable/accessible? It appears that over 50% of the participating digital repositories are searchable via general Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, via OAIster and via Google Scholar. All other search engines or portals access less than 50% of the participating digital repositories. It has to be emphasised that these findings reflect the answers of the respondents to the questionnaire and not actual searches using the search engines/ gateways/ portals mentioned. Therefore the results might reflect only the awareness of respondents about the searchability of their repositories. However, if their awareness is accurate, there appears to be no single search engine, portal or gateway that can access all participating digital repositories.

Other services on top of the digital repositories

The spread of possible services on top of the digital repositories appeared to be as follows:

Many repositories have their contents listed in a library catalogue: in the catalogue of the library of the institution (54%) and/or in a regional or national catalogue (47%).

A small minority of the repositories has added a printing-on-demand service to their repository (12%, while 13% have plans to develop such a link to a printing-on-demand service. A large majority (75%) has presently no plans for such a printing-on-demand service.

About one-third of the repositories have a service of displaying usage statistics per digital item (31%), while 25% have plans for such a service. Nearly half of the repositories (45%) have presently no plans for such a service.

About one third of the repositories have personal services for the depositing scientists, such as an automatically generated publication list, added to their repository (35%), while 18% have plans for such personal services. Nearly half of the repositories (47%) have presently no plans for such a service.

Services desired at a European level

In addition, the respondents were asked which services should have priority for further development at a European scale. The top three answers (selected by more than 33% of the respondents) were (1) general search engines, gateways and portals; (2) disciplinary and thematic search engines, gateways and portals; and (3) citation index services.