Montana State University

The Montana State University Library will design, build, and assess a prototype Institutional Research Data Index (IRDI) to promote the discovery and reuse of institutional datasets. The metadata index will promote discovery and reuse by automatically harvesting metadata from third-party data repositories and by optimizing content for commercial search engines. IRDI will reinforce research data as an essential scholarly product by interoperating with institutional research information management systems and functioning as a database that institutions can query and use to showcase institutional research, all while requiring far fewer resources than necessary to support a full institutional data repository.