In June 2016 at the Metrolina Library Association‘s Annual Conference, I presented a poster titled “Digital scholarship on the small campus: Using Omeka to curate scholarship.” The poster succinctly presents the work I’ve done to curate research and scholarly activity of students, faculty, and staff on my small rural campus.
Even though my campus is part of a large flagship institution, we are not part of the institutional repository (and even if we were, we don’t have the human resources required to be consistently active with the platform). Simultaneously, we do have faculty and student scholarship and research going on, and I wanted to figure out a way to capture some aspect of it. I thought – ‘what about (what I’ve named) ephemeral scholarship?’ Things like poster sessions, PowerPoint presentations, and the like – that don’t get published traditionally but do count as scholarly communication and output?Â
So I used my knowledge of Omeka to create a local repository of my campus’ ephemeral scholarship. I named the repository Lancer Scholar Square. Faculty, students, and staff who present poster sessions, presentations, or even art and design work, can submit their work to this platform. If there is a published article connected to their work, a link is connected to that database or IR. Links to all submitted works include the most restrictive Creative Commons license unless the submitter requests otherwise.Â
You can view the poster image to learn more about the challenges and implications for this project. At the time of this blog, the repository has 29 items, and I hope it keeps growing.
If there are ways you think I can improve this project or if you have questions, let me know!
The Ink on the Page 