Michael Day and Alex Ball of UKOLN have contributed to a recent discussion of the role of open source software for institutional repositories as part of a special section on Institutional Repositories: The Great Debate published in the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (Vol. 53, No. 4 , April/May 2009 
). Paul Jones of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported the initial motion that Institutional repositories should be built on open source software, arguing passionately that any other choice would be “un-archival and unsustainable in the long run.” In their response, the UKOLN contributors recognised the value of the open source development paradigm, while arguing that the main focus of repositories should be fundamentally pragmatic and primarily focused on the stewardship of institutional content. The special issue includes three other discussion topics, with contributors including Stevan Harnad, Nancy McGovern and Soo Young Rieh.