How the West was won: Providing repositories across the principality of Wales

Abstract

Within Wales there exists a close-knit community of twelve higher education institutions. We have our own funding body, the Higher Funding Council for Wales, our own library and IT forums: Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) and Higher Education Wales Information Technology (HEWIT), and our own National Library. Like the rest of the UK though, three years ago the number of institutions with repositories was very low, and those that existed contained very little in the way of content. In contrast, today there is full coverage, with each of the institutions running a repository. Some are maturing, some are still just starting out, but the essential building blocks of repositories are in place. With the assistance of the dedicated Welsh arm of the JISC-funded Repositories Support Project (RSP) the repositories are now in place and growing.