In praise of institutional repositories Richard Gallagher, Why We Need Institutional Repositories, The Scientist, October 10, 2005. Excerpt: Despite rapid explosion of knowledge in the life sciences, the full promise of digitization, storage and curation is nowhere close to being fully realized. The large-scale discipline-specific repositories that quickly became mainstream in information-intense branches such as genomics and proteomics are just the tip of the iceberg. The other seven-eighths comes in the shape of institutional repositories, such as MIT's DSpace, which provide the most comprehensive mechanism for digital preservation and dissemination. DSpace and other wide-ranging digital archives are truly transforming. They will house research data, journal articles, theses, teaching and learning materials, information for the general public, symposia and lectures, and informal accounts of life in the lab. While they are primarily being developed at universities, there is no reason why customized repositories shouldn't be introduced in other contexts, including industry....This new generation of institutional repositories does not compete with existing databases, it complements and extends them. At the same time, it reaffirms the position of an institution (in the case of a university) as a scholarly center and community hub.