Curriculum to Commons: Student Scholarship and Institutional Repositories Elizabeth Skene Digitial Initiatives Librarian Western Carolina University

About Western Carolina University Regional comprehensive university in the UNC system 52 miles W of Asheville, 25 miles E of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 8,821 undergraduates & 1,519 graduate students Top contributor to the National Conference Undergraduate Research Strong focus on teaching and undergraduate success

About my position Digital Initiatives Librarian Digital collections Data management, Digital Humanities, Open Access, institutional repository, copyright, grants, community partnerships, & more!

WCU’s Institutional Repository North Carolina Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship Built and maintained by UNC Greensboro Holds work from 8 University of North Carolina schools

WCU’s Institutional Repository Traditional scholarship in NC DOCKS Data is deposited in the UNC Odum Institute Dataverse Oh the possibilities! DMPTool + NC DOCKS + Dataverse

History and Support of the IR NC DOCKS at WCU Developed in 2008 by UNC Greensboro WCU joined in 2011 $200 annual fee Indexed by Google First item added March 11, 2011 5:06pm Initial work done by cataloging Primarily theses and dissertations Increasing number of faculty submissions Increasing visibility Still issues of marketing, awareness, and gaining broad support Outreach to library faculty Data management plan workshops Open Access debate Author rights education

2 years of minimal traction Started thinking of where we could find successes

Focus on Student Success Honors College Met with the new dean about Honors Theses Undergraduate Research Expo Option on submission form to add work to the IR Graduate English class A yearly project with letters from Special Collections

Annotation Digitization Digital collections IN the past, only annotation Since I came, DI has been digitizing Added to collections - Since we had them, we used the students’ transcriptions Digital collections

Is there some place on that page or in the metadata that it can be noted who transcribed each item? Digital Production Team

Digital Production Team Digitization Techs Content specialists Catalogers Gatekeeper Digital Production Team

How do we give the students credit? Solution Discussion Current metadata field? New metadata field? “About” page? Embed using Flickr on DH site? Headed Discussion Free labor We don’t get credit What about student workers? Metadata standards/actual descriptive content

The student…holds copyright to works the student creates as a part of academic endeavor at Western Carolina University. University Policy 84

Had been thinking of linking out – Wordpress site, Flickr, etc. How about the IR?

Solution: 1. Use existing “Related materials” field 2 Solution: 1. Use existing “Related materials” field 2. Link to full papers in NC DOCKS Moved discussion from credit to finding additional information Interns, student workers, etc.

Able to use transcriptions Provided users with context Gave recognition to students Made student work sharable Opportunity for future projects

12 papers 4 months 340+ views

Thoughts & takeaways Old papers = no releases = re-transcribing Consistency in style, include an abstract Presentation on IRs -> future scholars You don’t have to start from scratch Build it, then build it better Opportunities for student success Let faculty vet content This was a reserve process – starting with the final product without say in how it’s formed

@elizabethskene emskene@wcu.edu Thank you!