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Starting, Strengthening and Managing Institutional Repositories: A How-To-Do-It Manual is a practical guide that combines lessons and expertise of early institutional repository (IR) implementers. The book can be read straight through or consulted chapter-by-chapter as needed. Each chapter is clearly written, contains a bibliography, and can stand on its own.

The book has two parts. The first seven chapters, written by Nabe, cover all aspects of IRs, from why libraries should adopt them through assessment. The second part of the book consists of seven chapters by authors who provide their own perspectives on IR management. Both parts work well together to form a cohesive, strongly written whole.

In part 1, the introduction and first chapter define IRs and explain why libraries should adopt them. These sections provide useful background for people who are not familiar with IRs.

Chapter 2 covers planning. One of the recurring themes in the book—avoiding too much planning—is introduced on page 13:

Inability to address these issues should not stymie all progress, and overplanning can lead to frustration and gridlock. Furthermore, there is no demonstrable correlation between the resources committed to these ancillary activities and the success … of an IR.

Chapter 3 covers the major IR platforms and provides criteria for evaluation. Even if one's institution already has an IR, understanding the benefits and limitations of the software options is helpful to better understand the structure of other IRs. Because software features continually improve, this chapter should be used in conjunction with websites about each of the products.

Chapter 4 provides an overview of policies that should be in place for an IR. It gives examples from several institutions, encouraging new repository administrators to learn from the early adopters. Adapting another institution's policy is a great time-saver when starting an IR program.

The next chapters cover marketing, recruitment of content, and collection development. The author gives a realistic picture of the difficulty in recruiting content. He also provides good information regarding how to communicate with faculty and researchers about how the repository can fulfill their needs.

The last chapter of part 1 covers use and assessment. Increasing the use of one's IR relies on making content discoverable in search engines, often through the use of interoperable metadata. Some of the information conveyed in this chapter is slightly out-of-date (e.g., OAISTER is now part of WorldCat), but the concepts are still valid.

Part 3 provides expert views on topics, as well as a variety of perspectives on specific software products. While many of the issues the authors raise echo points made earlier in the book, this collection of essays also offers fresh ideas. For instance, it is instructive to learn from these IR managers why they selected their systems. It is also helpful that the authors represent a diverse set of institutions. Most importantly, since each of the case studies represents a successful IR, readers can learn from multiple people and find lessons relevant to their own institutions.

The book only touches lightly on archiving datasets and using an IR as a publishing platform, despite the emerging importance of these issues in the last two years. The lack of this information is a minor criticism; the nature of a monograph is to capture the state of a topic at a given point in time.

Starting, Strengthening and Managing Institutional Repositories is a very useful collection of information for managers of existing repositories. It would have been extremely helpful when we were beginning our repository; I recommend it to colleagues embarking on such an endeavor.