The previous experience Khazar gained in the process of implementing its own IR allowed its team of IT specialists and librarians to promote the idea of institutional repository network and act as a regional leader to develop this process and assist other universities around the country.
DIRNA is developing collaborative instances of one open-source institutional repository platform-DSpace, via partnerships with the European HEIs. To benefit the wider community, all developments from the partnerships will be openly available for adaptation.
A new idea of the project is to develop research capacity through institutional repository network designed to provide 7 HEIs in Azerbaijan with dedicated and configured repository hardware.There is no before such project in Azerbaijan with this approach, and it needs to be father developed.
Developments in digital technologies have affected many aspects of the academic enterprise, especially the way scholarly communication is being carried out. DIRNA supports the dissemination of knowledge by curating locally produced digital materials and creating institutionally unique digital collections of Azerbaijani Universities to support teaching and learning for inclusive education.
This project, for Azerbaijani Institutional Repository Network, offers the seven AZHEIs a means to enhance the DIRNA information environment and create a system to communicate and preserve the intellectual output of our scholars in ways not currently supported by more traditional library and publication models.

The main features of the DIRNA we propose:

• A digital environment for creating new scholarly works.
• A centralized resource that will allow DIRNA to represent the depth and breadth of its research and teaching to the local community and world.
• A means of preserving scholarly work occurring at DIRNA that has never been captured in a comprehensive way.
• All of these features align with current mission Khazar University Library & Information Center, responsible for this project, and build on existing strengths in both traditional areas of collection development and leadership in digital library content and services.

DIRNA activities include reviewing the current status of research outputs management in the seven Azerbaijani partner universities, assessing the drivers and barriers influencing Azerbaijani staff and students with regards to sharing their research outputs, developing tailored training to increase capacity among AZHEIs, research support staff for designing, implementing, operating, populating, and sustaining OAIRs.
The proposed platform will include three main components that fill the gaps in the project: 1) a network of repositories that enables discovery, 2) flexible central repository of knowledge supporting the Azerbaijani Universities’ teaching, research, and related activities, both in the present day and for the long-term future and 3) Virtual Reference Center as a hub of reference and research activities in institutional repository data management.
The Benefits of European Cooperation is the transfer of knowledge and experience established in European Universities to Azerbaijani Universities, ensurance of quality of services to be provided. This idea is a new to Azerbaijani universities, working with professionals in the field will contribute to the succes of the project. European added-value might be the new relationships, new project ideas, new opportunities, enlarged networks developed within this project.