On the road to Enlighten‐ment: Establishing an institutional repository service for the University of Glasgow

The purpose of this paper is to chart the development and growth of open access and institutional repositories at the University of Glasgow, Scotland from initial work in 2001 to the University's recently launched service, Enlighten. The University of Glasgow is a signatory to the Scottish Open Access Declaration and recently released a statement on Open Access.

The study will focus on the key lessons learned through a twin track approach of advocacy and service development during the DAEDALUS Project (2002‐2005) and the transition of that work to a University service called Enlighten. This service includes a repository for published and peer‐reviewed papers which has now had over 2 million hits and over 270,000 PDF downloads since it was established in February 2004.

The paper reveals the lessons learned by the Library and the project team. It also identifies the range of issues which must be addressed in the successful implementation of a repository and its transition to a production service. These include the development of content policies, copyright clearance and the cultural change necessary to populate a repository service. These challenges have and continue to be addressed by the repository team at the University of Glasgow.

This paper provides details of the lessons learned in the practical experience of setting up an institutional repository and ensuring its transition to a full and supported University service. It will be of particular interest to institutions implementing a repository or running a pilot service.