About the British Museum research repository
The British Museum Research Repository is an open access repository for the publications and public datasets produced by staff and research associates of the British Museum.
The British Museum actively promotes academic research of the highest quality by its own staff, and supports the research of others. This research is intended to advance the care, display and public understanding of the history of humanity as represented by the objects in the British Museum's collection, and to help people learn, understand and be inspired by human history through objects. To find out more about research at the British Museum please go to https://britishmuseum.org/research.aspx.
Repository aims:
The aims of the repository are to:
1. Provide information on all publications by British Museum staff or research associates
2. Provide a single point of open access to our full-text research outputs wherever possible
3. Make our research easier to find, and enhance the contribution we make to UK and international research
4. Respond to the open access expectations of our research funders.
The repository houses material such as journal articles, conference papers, books and book chapters, reports and datasets. Where the full item cannot be added, metadata about the research output is provided together with a link to the full item where possible.
Shared repository service
The repository is part of a Shared Research Repository service, encompassing the research outputs of a small number of UK cultural and heritage institutions: the British Library, British Museum, National Museums Scotland, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Our separate repositories can be visited each in turn or explored together via a single search through the collaborative Shared Repository page. The British Library manages the shared repository service. In the current beta phase, we welcome your feedback as we explore options to move to a full shared repository service.
The other repositories can be found here:
British Library research repository
National Museums Scotland research repository
Software
The repository is built using Samvera Hyku, a rapidly developing open source repository software in which multitenancy is a key feature. The British Library’s shared repository pilot project is an early adopter of the Hyku platform and the Library looks forward to sharing its experience around scalability, multi-tenancy and user experience.
The repository metadata is available for harvesting via the OAI-PMH protocol. The base URL is https://britishmuseum.iro.bl.uk/catalog/oai.