SEAFDEC/AQD Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center | Aquaculture Department
By Development Communication Section
Information Officers from SEAFDEC Secretariat and Departments (TD, MFRDMD, and IFRDMD) participated in the SEAFDEC Inter-Departmental Workshop on the Establishment of Institutional Repository conducted by AQD Library personnel at the SEAFDEC Training Department in Samut Prakan, Thailand from 6 to 9 March 2017.
During the Opening Program, SEAFDEC Deputy Secretary-General Dr. Kaoru Ishii emphasized that through the Workshop, repositories should be developed in all SEAFDEC Departments accommodating various types and forms of information and results of SEAFDEC works. The establishment of Institutional Repositories is important since it is one way of enhancing SEAFDEC’s visibility through improved access to SEAFDEC publications.
During the workshop, SEAFDEC/AQD resource persons Mr. Stephen Alayon, Mr. Elvi Nemiz and Mr. Daryl Superio introduced the SEAFDEC/AQD’s Institutional Repository (SAIR) and other potential repositories and databases that make use of records in the SAIR like Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA), Aquatic Commons, OceanDocs, and the IAMSLIC Digital Fisheries Library Box.
Created using DSpace, SAIR aims to store, preserve, and share AQD research outputs, thus, enabling easy access to and increasing the visibility of AQD scientific publications and published materials. From January 2011 to December 2016, SAIR has already registered 8,386,408 total downloads and 2,830,541 searches.
SEAFDEC Secretariat and the other Departments were encouraged to establish their own institutional repositories due to benefits such as:
- Repositories facilitate sharing of SEAFDEC information to external clients and users thereby increasing the institution’s visibility;
- Repositories allow better searching of SEAFDEC materials through search engines (e.g. Google, Worldcat) than through SEAFDEC websites;
- Institutional repositories will serve as the digital archive of each Department and all contents will have permanent and persistent link (URL) in the future.
The workshop participants were also guided by the SEAFDEC/AQD resource persons in developing their respective repository systems through the installation and customization of DSpace, and creating Communities and Collections.
On the last day of the Workshop, SEAFDEC Secretary-General, Dr. Kom Silapajarn, expressed his appreciation to SEAFDEC/AQD for extending support to the conduct of this Workshop and for sharing its expertise with the participants that would enable the SEAFDEC Secretariat and Departments to eventually share their publications and materials in a systematic manner. Dr. Silapajarn also urged the participants to continue developing their respective Repositories to enhance the visibility of SEAFDEC in the future.
