Open for business: ASU Digital Repository

The ASU Libraries have developed the ASU Digital Repository to serve as a central place for sharing and preserving the scholarly and creative work of Arizona State University. ASU faculty and researchers now have a tool that preserves their research and provides international exposure through commercial search engines, such as Google and Bing, as well as the ASU Libraries website.

The ASU Digital Repository is now online and open for business.

“Our goal with the ASU Digital Repository is to advance research and learning here at ASU,“ said Phil Konomos, associate university librarian and chief technology officer at ASU Libraries. “The ASU Digital Repository will provide broader access to important digital collections, as well as articles, data and other works by ASU’s world-class faculty.”

Many studies have demonstrated that articles that are freely available online have increased citation rates and impact. Additionally, providing free, online access to ASU scholarship benefits the local community as well, allowing teachers in K-12 schools to use reliable and cutting-edge references in their lesson plans.

The ASU Digital Repository also encourages transdisciplinary research by engaging scholars and researchers worldwide, increasing impact globally through the rapid dissemination of knowledge.

There are some notable collections already in the ASU Digital Repository. The ASU School of Music Performances collection exposes the talent of ASU’s faculty and graduate student concert performances to a worldwide audience. While the ASU Libraries have always preserved student theses and dissertations in their print holdings, in the spring of 2011, the ASU Graduate College began archiving them digitally in the ASU Theses and Dissertations collection, providing increased visibility to ASU’s graduate work.

The ASU Digital Repository also functions as a tool to help faculty meet public access policies and archival requirements specified by many federal grants. “Researchers are now faced with new requirements in order to secure grant funding. The ASU Digital Repository is there to help them,” Konomos says.

For more information, visit the ASU Digital Repository or email digitalrepository@asu.edu.