Abstract:
Institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its
community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution
and its community members. Usability of institutional repository is evaluating in which the
system is functionally correct, efficient to use, easy to learn and remember, error tolerant, and
subjectively pleasing. The number of Institutional Repositories (IRs) has been growing in the
past few years. However, most IRs was not widely used by the intended end users. To increase
users’ acceptability, evaluating usability of IRs was essential. So, this study was aimed at
usability study of higher education institutional repository for improving the institutional
repository usability and service. The study was also made operational using cross-sectional
survey design with both qualitative and quantitative method. Data was collected using
questionnaire and interview from Addis Ababa and Jimma University IR users of 60
postgraduate students and librarians and interview with 4 IR managers who were responsible in
the management and maintenance of the IR. The universities and respondents were selected
purposefully. The collected data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science
version 21 using both descriptive and inferential statistics.The results foundthat no enough thesis
uploaded considering all departments, the uploaded thesis were also lacks updating and missing
of placements. Postgraduate students’ indicated that institutional repository lacks some
advanced search like browse by department, publisher, adviser and publication year. Moreover,
from the librarians’ point of view also revealed that the system has complexity user interface.
Slow connection, lack of feedback and multiple language support were also identified from
students, librarians and IR administrators. Furthermore, the interview was found that the system
lacks additional feature user statistics and plagiarism checker. They also describechallenge that
affect usability of IR were lack of awareness about IR and lack of information literacy skill.
Furthermore, the result obtained from the interview of Addis Ababa University respondents
indicated that the Dspace of IR lack integration with Greenstone and Koha softwares. In Jimma
University also the IR lacks accessibility via countryside.The finding recommends that library
managers and IR administrators should improve the usability of institutional repository in terms
of IR collections (upload ETDs on time and organized them in a right way),make to apply the
multiple language and feedback support for improving access, should invest time, staff and
resources in marketing the repository to users.
