Visibility and accessibility to documentary heritage of University of Havana: Institutional Repository SCRIPTORIUM

Abstract

It is described a set of actions, developed by the Direction of Information of the University of Havana, to expand the possibilities of access and use of the thesis defended in the context of different programs of the academic institution. It is argued why thesis are part of documentary heritage of academics institution. Specialized sites in this area of knowledge were studied and some data were taken. Two questionnaires were applied, one of them was dedicated to identify what type of repositories are currently used for the scientific production of an institution and another was dedicated to identify the software most used with these purposes, its peculiarities, advantages and disadvantages. Among the main findings were obtained, firstly that the repositories most commonly used are institutional and thematic; secondly, that Dspace is the most used tool currently used for these types of repositories. The main aspects in the institutional repository implementation and the agenda for the future development of this repository are described. It concludes by reaffirming the importance of promoting the principles of open access movement in the academic community.