College of Law creates digital repository for faculty writing

The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law has a new digital repository for faculty writing that allows instant access to full-text, searchable versions of papers, articles and other scholarly writing. 

“This will be a great resource for publicizing and disseminating our faculty’s scholarship around the world,” said Dean Paul Schiff Berman. 

The new repository is an example of ASU President Michael Crow’s efforts for social embeddedness as part of the New American University by making the professor’s work more readily available to the public. 

“It’s our 21st century display case, and it’s a big case,” said Leslie A. Pardo, Access Services Librarian & Repository Project Manager at the Ross-Blakley Law Library, who helped create and implement the system. 

The repository is the culmination of the vision of Victoria Trotta, the College’s Associate Dean for Information Technology and the Ross-Blakley Law Library, who hired Pardo, in part, because of her experience in building such a system. 

The repository contains 1,355 articles, 222 book chapters, 200 books, 208 presentations, plus newspaper articles, reports, briefs and blogs, and grows daily. It can be found by going to the College of Law’s homepage at www.law.asu.edu, clicking on the link to the Ross-Blakley Law Library and finding the listing under “Law Library Resources.” 

It has garnered praise from the law school faculty and from law librarians across the country.

“Congratulations on creating an amazingly clean and efficient scholarship repository,” wrote Tom Black, the Webmaster at the University of Arkansas School of Law. “It is one of the best I’ve seen to date.” 

The repository is designed to capture the scholarly output of the faculty in a form that features excellent organization, permits subject and key word searching capability, and offers full-text access to most publications.  Full-text access is provided through links to Social Science Research Network, HeinOnline, LexisNexis, Westlaw and other electronic services. 

Members of the Ross-Blakley Law Library staff designed and implemented the project completely in-house. In addition to Pardo, Faraz Khan, Principal Systems Developer, was a major contributor. Members of the Access Services staff, including Serene Rock, Nicole Sandberg and Mariko Bigler, spent countless hours to implement the project.