Adoption of institutional repositories for electronic theses and dissertations projects in Zimbabwe's public academic libraries

Theses and dissertations (TDs) are an invaluable scholarly literature output of university graduates, contributing to the fulfilment of university mandates to impact national development through research. Public universities in Zimbabwe have adopted open access institutional repositories (IRs) in which to store electronic theses and dissertations (ETD). This study sought to determine the development levels of ETD collections, establish the software platforms being used, and discover challenges being faced in developing ETD collections in repositories at these universities. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model was adopted, and a mixed methods approach was employed. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and bibliometric analyses from library directors, assistant/IR librarians, IRs, policy documents and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) at eight universities. Qualitative data were analysed thematically while the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was adopted to analyse quantitative data. Findings showed slow development of ETD collections, with DSpace as the software of choice across the universities. Faculty cooperation in depositing ETDs is minimal, thus affecting progress of ETD initiatives. Mandating the deposit of electronic copies of TDs would populate repositories and increase visibility of research.