In the less than six months since the launch of DigitalCommons@Fairfield initiative by Fairfield University's DiMenna-Nyselius Library, more than 1,000 scholarly items have been catalogued and are now available in this open access institutional repository. To date, thousands of researchers from the University and around the world have downloaded materials. Essentially an online library of research papers, conferences and scholarly videos, the project highlights the scholarship of Fairfield faculty.

"This is quite an accomplishment since we publicly launched it only in April 2012," said Nina Peri, project coordinator of DigitalCommons@Fairfield noting the 1,000th item logged in was " Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State ," an article by Associate Professor Dr. David Crawford, co-written by Paul Silverstein. "Since then, we have recorded 6,440 downloads from all over the world."

"DigitalCommons is part of an effort by Fairfield University librarians to increase the visibility of faculty members' scholarship, maximize its research impact, and contribute to worldwide accessibility," said Joan Overfield, University Librarian. Its platform is optimized for visibility through Google, Google Scholar and other search engines.

The institutional repository also includes a unique video collection "American Scholars of Religion," which showcases Professor Al Benney's interviews of major theologians. This collection was recently named an exemplar work by Bepress, the leading hosted solution for institutional repositories. Dr. Benney, professor of Religious Studies, has been working on the "American Scholars of Religion" project for more than a decade, and worked with Jackie Kremer, Outreach Librarian, to mount the collection. Inquiring about immortality, feminism and belief, he has interviewed such major figures as Margaret Farley from Yale, David Tracy from the University of Chicago, and Fr. John O'Malley, S.J., from Georgetown. In a nod to DigitalCommons, Bepress noted: "True to the spirit of the project, Kremer and Benney have found ways to educate students on the subject matter through the work of publishing the massive collection."

You can explore DigitalCommons by going to http://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu .

Posted On: 09-14-2012 11:09 AM

Volume: 45 Number: 48