Addis Ababa University Institutional Repository: Open Access to Ethiopian Academic Research

Overview

The Addis Ababa University Institutional Repository (AAU-ETD) is an open-access digital repository that collects, preserves, and disseminates the scholarly output of Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia's oldest and largest institution of higher learning. The repository serves as a central access point for master's theses, doctoral dissertations, preprints, and other research outputs produced by AAU's faculty, staff, and students.

History and Founding

Addis Ababa University was founded in 1950 as the University College of Addis Ababa; it was restructured and renamed Haile Selassie I University in 1961 and took its present name in 1975. The institutional repository was registered in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) with a birth date of March 3, 2016, reflecting the formalisation of the repository's open-access infrastructure at that time, though earlier records indicate the repository has collected theses as far back as February 2009. The repository runs on DSpace software.

Collections and Holdings

The AAU-ETD archives the full range of academic research undertaken at the university across disciplines including arts, engineering, health and medicine, humanities, mathematics, science, social sciences, and technology. The repository holds works by current and former AAU faculty, staff, and students, with an emphasis on theses and dissertations as part of the university's long academic history. The AAU library system, which has branches across 10 colleges, is a central resource for academic support and is a member of the Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL).

Access and Usage

The repository is freely accessible online at etd.aau.edu.et. All AAU faculty, staff, and students are invited to submit their work. Submissions should be directed through college libraries. General enquiries about the repository can be directed to digirep@aau.edu.et. The repository provides an OAI-PMH interface for metadata harvesting by external services.