Digital repositories and discoverability: definitions and typology

Digital repositories typically improve the efficacy with which GLAMR organizations can manage their digital content and ensure its discoverability. Repositories are consequently a key enabling technology and have come to dominate the digital service offerings of many organizations. This chapter will provide a background to digital repositories, their emergence, and their typical characteristics. We will first seek to define digital repositories and will go on to explore several prominent repository types, resulting in the presentation of a 'digital repository typology'. The concept of discoverability is central to our understanding of repositories and is a core concern of this chapter too. We will therefore explore the principal attributes of repository discoverability, including consideration of the most significant digital repository discoverability technologies and users' typical routes to repository content discovery.