Shared Research Repository

The Shared Research Repository provides access to the research outputs of our participating cultural and heritage institutions, currently the British Library, British Museum, National Museums Scotland, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), National Trust, Science Museum Group, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Our six separate repositories can be visited each in turn or explored together via a single search through the Shared Repository page at https://iro.bl.uk. A search from this page will search across the content of all repositories, with the source repository clearly indicated in the results.

Our repositories house material such as journal articles, research reports, conference papers, books and book chapters, datasets, images, exhibition texts and blog posts.

Our research

Research informs and supports almost every aspect of our work, be it curation, conservation, preservation, resource discovery, digital innovation, cultural programming or learning.

Whether it’s a major exhibition or a new way to discover or understand a unique part of our collections, it has been enabled by staff research. The outputs of our research have important value for future researchers and we want to make them discoverable and accessible for everybody.

Our research ranges from close investigation of items in museum collections or library archives, through research to support exhibitions, interpretative web pages and public events, to professional work in preservation, conservation, data mining or archaeology. On the one hand, each organisation has its own specialist research areas – papyrus manuscripts at the British Library, tapestries at National Museums Scotland, plant science at Kew for example – but on the other the synergies between our research areas are strong and collaboration frequent, so it makes good sense to provide a single point of access to our combined outputs.

Our repository service

In need of an open repository for our own research outputs and aware other heritage organisations were in a similar position, the British Library developed and now hosts the Shared Research Repository.

Each organisation has their own Research Repository with their own admin access. They deposit and manage their own content while the British Library’s metadata, content and discovery expertise make us the ideal service hosts. We work with an external technical supplier to deliver the service. Our partner organisations value our guidance in structuring their data, increased usage, and the attractive presentation of our combined research outputs.

The Shared Research Repository is built using open source Samvera Hyku technology, supporting our desire to embrace open science and open access to research outputs. Image files can be viewed in detail using the Universal Viewer; extensive metadata based on international standards allows you to describe any output in detail. DataCite DOIs can be created on deposit and make it easy to cite a work, provide a persistent URL and support best practice in managing repository content. ORCID author identifiers are also supported; and a 'pasted DOI' button auto-populates much of the bibliographic data, vastly speeding up deposits.

Further information

Further information about the Shared Research Repository and the British Library's Repository Services can be found at https://www.bl.uk/repository-services.

The metadata is available for harvesting via the OAI-PMH protocol, please refer to the separate repositories for the base URLs.

We are always happy to share further information about our work.

Email openaccess@bl.uk

Twitter @BLopenresearch

Banner image: Eric Fischer, See something or say something: Manchester

Used in accordance with a CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.  

Shared Research Repository logos © British Library

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