Thomas' Work Space

Cost- and time-saving benefits of learning material eRepositories include:

1. sharing and reuse of content for the teacher ad learner
2. de-duplication for the IT support

Typical issues I have encountered with learning materials repositories:

1. questionable applicability of the software-object-oriented-design   (OOD)-derived concept of encapsulated and reusable learning “objects” to highly progressive subjects like language arts;
2. also, a not uncommon problem of OOD gone wrong: having a “God-object” vs. SOLID-principled object-design, is even more of a risk with “learning objects”: Don’t they not always tend to be too complex to truly reap the benefits of having a design based on many small encapsulated and reusable objects in software programming?
3. licensing & copyright or privacy FERPA restrictions preventing uploads and specialization of interest prevents the network effects which have made the open internet so pervasive (and disruptive to some businesses);
4. curation using metadata implementing controlled vocabularies and ontologies , even if crowd-sourced, remains a daunting task for domain specialists for non-librarians, while it has been said to be the secret of librarians:

“als ob er jetzt das Geheimnis dieser Wände aussprechen müßte: ‘Herr General,’ sagt er ‘Sie wollen wissen, wieso ich jedes Buch kenne? Das kann ich Ihnen nun allerdings sagen: Weil ich keines lese!” Weißt du, das war mir nun beinahe wirklich zuviel! Aber er hat es mir, wie er meine Bestürzung gesehen hat, auseinandergesetzt. Es ist das Geheimnis aller guten Bibliothekare, daß sie von der ihnen anvertrauten Literatur niemals mehr als die Büchertitel und das Inhaltsverzeichnis lesen. ‘Wer sich auf den Inhalt einläßt, ist als Bibliothekar verloren!’ hat er mich belehrt. ‘Er wird niemals einen Überblick gewinnen!’” (Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften)

eRepository implementations I have used:

1. Our Moodle instance is still looking for an erepository system to integrate. We are getting some eRepository benefits (easy reuse across courses without need for term-wise recycling/re-upload; de-duplication) by implementing [your language here] metacourses in which we enroll all [your language here]  “child courses”
2. The equella eRepository is used by NC-LOR, and TBA:I have managed learning materials in it earlier, in conjunction with Blackboard – most recommended (at least then) among educational technologists, but not for the faint of heart, which seems to have limited the faculty adoption (and for which NC-LOR may have been a reference implementation, if I remember correctly). One of the things I did not like about equella when I used it (2006-2008) was the seemingly endless point-and-click-and-WWWait.
3. The Blackboard content-system was WebDAV based and therefore, once you had established the connection of your client to the WebDAV share (which MS-VISTA WebDAV updates unfortunately temporarily broke ),  featured an extremely user-friendly integration with the MS-Windows shell that  allowed for batch-handling of files in a familiar, fast “fat client” interface.
4. I was, when it was first released, and its metadata-tagging features advertised by Jon Udell, highly impressed by – and consequently have become an avid proponent of, and much more active photographer itself –  MS-Windows Vista (now also in: Live) PhotoGallery which combines intuitive use with great speed . However, requirements for managing and sharing a personal photo and video collection are not nearly as complex as for shared learning materials (although I have also used it managing my personal work ePortfolio).