Showing posts with label yearly workflow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yearly workflow. Show all posts

Monday, January 16, 2017

Digital Commons annual refresh

Digital Commons annual refresh
Digital Commons has 3 level of hierarchy: Communities, collections, submissions.
It is Search Engine Optimized to make indexing by Google, etc. most effective. The two primary ways of doing that is by introductory text on the community and collection level, and metadata on the submission level.
As a new community or collection is built, introductory text needs to be added. Sometimes this gets overlooked, so once a year it’s good to review each community/collection to be sure the information exists and is up to date.

What we like to see on each page is some descriptive text, sometimes lifted directly from their college web page, links to the department where appropriate, and on the school/department levels the name of their Dean or Chair. These especially need to be refreshed annually, as they change over time. I keep a spreadsheet in the Digital Commons FC2 drive, which may need some updating, that lists all the communities and what we have. I will probably need to give you access to the drive, but for now I have it on a flash drive. One thing you might notice is that some of the collections have a Y in the other administrator column (C). These are administered by someone else, who should be adding the Intro text themselves. If you notice some without, though, please drop me a note.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Ideas for supporting McNair Program

We added the McNair journal to Digital Commons about 4 years ago, and it has been downloaded over 900 times. The current iteration of the journal is a pdf of the print version with a little about the student and a one-page abstract about their research. I have found 3 other examples of McNair journals in institutional repositories, and they all have full papers attached. The reason may have to do with the cost to print the journal. If that is the case, then perhaps the print edition could continue as before, but the online edition could contain the papers, as well. It might be a useful way to demonstrate outcomes for the grant, too. 
Grand Valley State University: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair/
University of Pennsylvania: http://repository.upenn.edu/mcnair_scholars/

In speaking to Herma (cc: Barbara), I found out that "Summer Research students are required to write one abstract for conferences and one for the journal. In some cases, their mentor requires them to write a full paper as well, especially when their research is for credit. So your point is certainly thought provoking. And I'm so happy to see that people are downloading the journals so many times!!! That is good news. We'll be in touch, Herma :) ". 

A supplemental idea of housing their research posters in Digital Commons, in the soon-to-be created Poster Palooza collection was a definite hit, so we should follow up with them about that after the summer program. 

Monday, October 10, 2016

Calendar of events

February - Fair Use Week - plan some events to publicize what Fair Use means for Education. See: http://fairuseweek.org/resources/ for resources, including a great fair use poster.

April -
Sokol High School Literary Awards, sponsored by Friends and Foundation of the Rochester Public Library. Contact: Rebecca Fuss <Rebecca.Fuss@libraryweb.org>
Director of Programming & Outreach
Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library
115 South Avenue, Rochester NY 14604
585-428-8350
Brockport contacts the winners (with information provided by Rebecca), congratulating them and asking their permission to publish their winning entry in Digital Commons. We also send them a release form, (these documents are in the Sokol folder of the DC FC2 drive), attend the ceremony, present them with a certificate (also in DC FC2 Sokol folder) with their name, the name of their entry and the URL where it will be posted. I create the metadata record first and add the presentation after I get the release form (usually at the ceremony). Rebecca usually sends me the pdfs in the week following the ceremony.