The digital commons are a form of commons involving the distribution and communal ownership of informational resources and technology. 
Resources are typically designed to be used by the community by which they are created.
Digital repository: A system that can organize, store, and retrieve digital assets. More specifically used within the library/ information science field than digital asset management systems. Within this context, it also incorporates the suite of services associated with the curation of digital objects such as digital preservation and ongoing metadata work.
Institutional repository (IR): A library of digital objects and associated metadata from a single institution. 
The phrase ‘institutional repository’ is often used informally to differentiate between systems and services to collect and disseminate scholarly content (peer-reviewed articles written by faculty, electronic theses and dissertations) versus those systems and services supporting other types of digital objects (i.e., digital images of artwork).
Open access institutional repositories were created to promote access to information, encourage scholarly communication, and demonstrate institutional prestige. While these repositories have been widely adopted, the quality of their contents often fails to represent their institution’s scholarly output. Moreover, current research uses measurements of quantity, not quality, to assess their value.
The SEALS Digital Commons contains the digital collections of the academic institutions in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. In 1998 the South East Academic Libraries System (SEALS) was established by the academic libraries as an informal academic library forum in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. SEALS became a formal academic library consortium in 1999, with the vision to create a virtual library for the Eastern Cape. The member libraries are from the Nelson Mandela University, Rhodes University, University of Fort Hare, and Walter Sisulu University.
The Rhodes University Institutional Repository is the Rhodes Digital Commons (Repository). You will gain access to the research output generated by Rhodes University researchers.
