Arca is a Canadian consortial digital repository based on an Islandora multisite, coordinated by the BC ElectronicLibrary Network, hosted and supported by discoverygarden. It is currently home to 11 BC post-secondary institutions’ repositories and growing, giving them an affordable way to provide access to faculty and student research output across multiple post-secondary institutions, and to support the management of institutional digital assets. This session describes how Arca came to be, including how government funding was obtained, the decision to go open source, the challenges of wrangling the needs of a very diverse group of institutions on a shared code base, and the particular challenges of doing it in Canada. And how we’re doing it on a shoestring budget (for a given value of “shoestring”), with minimal in-house technical expertise and a lot of learning on the fly. Possible takeaways: Get some details on how a consortial repository model might work for you; start a conversation about best practices for consortial repositories; consider the benefits and pitfalls of a collaborative repository vs. doing it yourself.
