University of Dhaka Institutional Repository DSpace

History and Founding

The University of Dhaka, established on 1 July 1921, is the oldest and largest public university in Bangladesh. The university library, which began with 18,000 books inherited from Dhaka College and Dhaka Law College, has grown into the largest library in the country, now holding over 680,000 books and periodicals together with 30,000 rare manuscripts, microfilms, and microfiche. The University of Dhaka Institutional Repository (DUIR) was established to collect and preserve the university's scholarly output digitally, with open-access archiving of research articles beginning in June 2012.

Collections and Holdings

The repository, running on the DSpace platform, contains full-text research output produced by the University of Dhaka's academic community including theses, dissertations, internship reports, journal articles, and conference proceedings. The repository is unique in Bangladesh for also archiving digitised newspapers, rare manuscripts, and historical materials from the university library's physical collections. As of its establishment, the repository featured open-access materials across all academic disciplines represented at the university.

Access

The institutional repository is publicly accessible as an open-access platform, allowing university members and the wider community free access to research publications. Academics and researchers at the University of Dhaka may also archive their own publications through the repository. The DUIR was the first institutional repository of its kind in Bangladesh to make such an impact on access to digitised resources.