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Strength through collaboration: the UNISA-UP partnership

Ansie van der Westhuizen, Unisa & Ina Smith, University of Pretoria 

Productive partnerships are those which evolve and continue to yield benefits, create new value and work through interpersonal connections and internal infrastructures which enhance learning for all parties (Rosabeth Moss Kantor, 1990). By combining expertise and professional talents and learning from one another, institutions in South Africa can complement, benefit and strengthen each other on various levels.  

Through this paper we would like to share the partnership which evolved between the University of South Africa and the University of Pretoria during the implementation of the UNISA institutional repository. This partnership began with an open mind and an attitude that we both could gain much from the other. UNISA followed in the footsteps of many other institutions in the rest of the world through taking the decision to invest in an institutional repository in order to archive the intellectual output of members of the institution, but also to provide open access and increase the visibility of research conducted at the institution. To accomplish this they decided to build on the experiences of the University of Pretoria. By learning from the University of Pretoria, they managed to reduce the implementation time of the repository from the expected 12 months (or longer) to a period of only 4 months. This was also a real challenge for the University of Pretoria since needs, expertise, human resources et al. differ from institution to institution. The role of each institution, the processes followed as well as experiences gained will be discussed. We would also like to encourage others to become part of this partnership by implementing similar projects at their institutions.

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