Supporting Students and Faculty with an Institution-led Publishing Program

Seton Hall University (SHU) serves diverse stakeholders across its three New Jersey campuses by publishing a wide array of academic materials in its institutional repository (IR). From student-led journals, to theses (which currently have 1,467,560 downloads across 192 countries), to campus-wide events such as the Petersheim Academic Exposition, the eRepository @ Seton Hall University seeks to meet faculty and student publishing needs.

We are excited that the number of downloads from the IR is fast approaching 3 million. According to Sebastian Derry, Assistant Dean for Public Services at Seton Hall University Libraries, the eRepository reflects the library’s mission by providing access to theses and dissertations as well as supporting faculty’s interdisciplinary approach to research. Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are the most frequently downloaded documents from the repository, with 216,000 downloads from 30,877 institutions in 226 countries. SHU’s press release about reaching the milestone of 2 million downloads in 2017 underlined Derry’s point: “This is significant for the fact that the eRepository allows the University’s research to become a viable worldwide resource.”

Journal publishing

Our institution-led publishing program, managed by the SHU Libraries, includes a journal publishing program for the law school and the wider university. In fall 2018, Locus, a new undergraduate research journal created to feature excellent examples of undergraduate scholarship, was launched by the College of Arts & Sciences. The journal has since been viewed by 52 institutions in 43 countries. This is terrific exposure for students who want to build a digital portfolio, and it gives the editors valuable metrics to better understand their readership. Faculty advisor Nathan Kahl, PhD, Associate Professor of Mathematics, was delighted with the process and has become a fan of the institution-led publishing platform.

Locs Journal of Undergraduate Research logoSHU’s Catholic mission

SHU is a private Roman Catholic University, and the repository also ties into the Catholic mission, which focuses on community service and servant leadership. The open nature of the repository is a great service to the campus, local, and global communities. SHU believes that getting involved in the community teaches lessons that can’t be taught in any classroom. The use of the repository, whether for a student-run journal or a campus-wide event such as the Petersheim Exposition, allows SHU to share scholarship and campus resources. SHU’s commitment to the study of theology is also important. In additional to departmental collections, religion-focused journals include Arcadia: A Student Journal for Faith and Culture and Vocations – A Publication of the Center for Vocation & Servant LeadershipThe Catholic Advocate, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Newark from 1951 to 1987, is currently being uploaded into the repository’s digital collections to preserve our institutional history.

Open access journals

Open access journals are available to student organizations, academic and campus centers and administrative departments.  We have had great success with Political Analysis, a student-run journal which added an online presence to its printed issues in 2016 and has over 15,000 downloads globally. The editors and authors find the dashboard metrics very helpful to determine the global reach of student scholarship.

Political Analysis Journal logoFor more information about creating online journals, see Starting, Publishing, and Sustaining an Online Journal: Beginner’s Workshop which was presented at the Digital Commons Conference at The College at Brockport in 2016. This presentation can help other institutions create a framework to launch open access journals.

Open educational resources

To promote sharing among faculty, we created an Open Educational Resources collection on the repository to highlight projects from our Digital Humanities Committee, which sponsors multiple faculty programs per year.  We have also added faculty assignments that utilized PolicyMap, a GIS Lite mapping tool, from disciplines including anthropology, political science and health care administration. Many of the faculty from these different departments had not met prior to the PolicyMap rollout. Now, because of eRepository, they can track each other’s mapping assignments in their classes. PolicyMap continues to be a thread between departments to improve digital literacy among students and faculty communication through the IR.

Conclusion

The eRepository partners with diverse stakeholders to support faculty and student needs.  The next planned project is a syllabi repository for the School of Diplomacy and International Relations that will reduce paper storage and allow virtual sharing of syllabi. We are also excited to be taking in programs from the History Department’s symposia and more academic materials from across our campuses.  We will continue to work with the Office of Research and Grant Services (OGRS) to promote scholarship output and results for Seton Hall faculty, administrative departments and students.  Regular distribution of IR statistics are sent to university deans in an annual report. These reports showcase the excellent global maps that are created by the Digital Commons dashboard.

Map of theses and dissertations global downloads for Seton Hall University
Map of theses and dissertations global downloads for Seton Hall University

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Library Hours Summer 2019

#SHU_Libraries Summer Hours in effect

Tuesday, May 21st — Thursday, August 8th

Monday-Friday 8am – 10pm
Saturday & Sunday 9am – 5pm

Library Closed
Memorial Day Weekend Saturday, May 25th — Monday, May 27th
4th of July Weekend Thursday, July 4th — Sunday, July 7th

View the library’s complete Summer Hours
https://library.shu.edu/library/library-hours


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Kanopy Videostreaming Service Offered By Library For Faculty

Kanopy LogoKanopy, our on-demand streaming video service, is a wonderful resource and we are happy to see it being so well-used.  However, our library materials budget is limited and we cannot sustain the current level of spending. This academic year we have already spent over $14,000 to lease about 90 films (an important note here is that we do not own the films, we only purchase access to each one for one year). In order to continue this service we need to reduce the cost.

Previously, Kanopy films were automatically purchased after 30 seconds of viewing by any user with access to the library, including walk in visitors.

In an effort to eliminate purchases being triggered by casual users and focus on class-related use of the rich academic material included in Kanopy, we have made the following changes:

1. We removed films to which we do not have current access from the catalog. (We used to have all 21,000+ films listed, available for viewing and automatic triggering).

2. Kanopy films to which we do have current access still appear in the catalog for the use of the whole campus community. These will be removed at the end of the one-year subscription period. New films to which we have purchased access are added promptly to the catalog for immediate availability.

3. All films available through Kanopy can still be browsed via the database A-Z list; however, we have added a statement that films can only be requested by faculty:

Kanopy Database Screenshot

4. We moved the Kanopy films listing on Accessing Films at SHU so now Kanopy is part of Streaming for classroom use further supporting the idea that Kanopy films are for academic purposes rather than entertainment. Note that we have other streaming video resources listed there as well.

5. Faculty can browse, search and request Kanopy films directly through the Kanopy interface. Films to which we have access will appear first. To watch or request a video:

          • Click on the film you want, or mouse over it and click on “watch”. If we have access to the film it will open and give a prompt to play it. You will not know if we have access to a film until you click on it – do not assume we have access simply because you see a film’s cover shown on the Kanopy site!
          • Note that you will always see this message at the top of the page, but that does not mean the film is not available—you should be able to play the video:

Limited Access Message

          • If the film is not available, instead of the “play video” or “watch” option you will be prompted to fill in this request form:

Request Form Screenshot

Videos requested by faculty typically will be available within two working days and often less.

If you have questions about Kanopy, please contact:
Acquisitions Librarian Sulekha.Kalyan@shu.edu


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