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Ļć½¶Ö±²„Institutional Repository preserves, promotes work of university faculty and students

Ļć½¶Ö±²„Institutional Repository preserves, promotes work of university faculty and students

Contact: James Carskadon

Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries Associate Professor Claudia C. Holland (standing) assists Ļć½¶Ö±²„Social Science Research Center Associate Research Professor Kathleen Ragsdale with navigation of the Ļć½¶Ö±²„Institutional Repository. (Photo by Beth Wynn)

STARKVILLE, Miss.ā€”Ļć½¶Ö±²„ā€™s Institutional Repository helps broaden the accessibility and impact of scholarship produced by the Ļć½¶Ö±²„community.

Launched in 2016 and managed by Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries, the institutional repository showcases and preserves the work of Ļć½¶Ö±²„faculty, staff and students. Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries faculty and staff members provide guidance about sharing and preserving scholarly research, data and university archives through the repository.

ā€œThe purpose of the IR is to preserve and make accessible any scholarship thatā€™s produced at the university by faculty, students and staff,ā€ Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries Associate Professor Claudia C. Holland said. ā€œItā€™s not limited to text-based content. Weā€™re also interested in images, music, video and data sets. You name it, weā€™ll take it. We want to make our communityā€™s scholarship and creative works discoverable and easily accessible.ā€

Julie D. Shedd, Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries coordinator of digital initiatives and web services, stated, ā€œItā€™s a great way to have your work seen by not only the general public, but also your colleagues at Ļć½¶Ö±²„and elsewhere. The IR can open up new avenues for collaboration, and itā€™s a good entryway for undergraduate and graduate students to get their work out there.ā€

The Institutional Repository was recently enhanced to provide better platform stability and usability. Although there are submission guidelines, Shedd emphasized that if it is something ā€œby, for or about MSU,ā€ it probably has a place in the Institutional Repository.

As more researchers shift from subscription-based to open publishing models, Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries staff are available to help them navigate copyright and licensing issues. Submissions to the Institutional Repository use a licensing structure by which the creator allows others to freely download and share their copyrighted works. Licensing is the crux of success for any open repository, Holland said.

ā€œFaculty are really busy, so the library is here to help in any way we can to encourage deposits, make the deposit happen and then promote the scholarship produced by our community in whatever way we can,ā€ Holland said.

For more on the Institutional Repository, visit . For questions, contact Shedd at iradmin@msstate.edu or Holland at cholland@library.msstate.edu.

More information on Ļć½¶Ö±²„Libraries can be found at .

Ļć½¶Ö±²„is Mississippiā€™s leading university, available online at .