PENN LIBRARY LAUNCHES SCHOLARLY REPOSITORY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Joe Zucca, Dir. for Planning and Communications
zucca@pobox.upenn.edu
215-573-4643 voice
215-898-0559 fax

February 3, 2005

PENN LIBRARY LAUNCHES PUBLISHING INITIATIVE:
SCHOLARLY REPOSITORY ON THE WEB

The University of Pennsylvania Library today announced the debut of ScholarlyCommons@Penn, a digital repository of research and scholarship produced by Penn faculty and students. The repository, a web-based service of Penn’s digital library, is a multifaceted resource. It opens a new window on the intellectual life of the University. It advances research, and may in time help scholars reinvent the methods used to share and communicate new knowledge.

The repository was born in a partnership between the Library and Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. At this writing, it includes journal articles, conference papers, technical reports, and dissertations from the School’s six departments. Eventually, an even broader range of Engineering research, from computer code to simulations to multimedia presentations, will find a home in the repository as well.

ScholarlyCommons@Penn gave faculty, librarians, and IT professionals an opportunity to exchange and blend their expertise and creativity. Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Carton Rogers says the effort “underscored the Library’s increasingly collaborative role in the academic enterprise.” That role, according to Rogers, “bolsters the University’s strategic priorities by helping to raise the visibility of Penn scholarship and enhancing the infrastructure for research. For the Library, the development of institutional repositories is just one of several partnerships organized around our digital services, partnerships that are augmenting, even transforming, the traditional collection-building activities of librarians.”

The repository project plays to another of Penn’s strategic aspirations, the advancement of learning through technological innovation. Eduardo Glandt, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, said, “The Library today is exploiting the web to help us reframe the environment in which scholars communicate with one another, to help the world discover the richness of faculty creation and in time I hope the sophistication of student research as well.” Rogers agreed and added, “The Library’s goal is to extend the repository not only in a vertical direction to include many levels of learning, but horizontally as well, across the spectrum of scholarship, creating a valuable resource for the entire institution.”

Readers on campus and around the globe can browse, search and download full-text from the repository web site at http://repository.upenn.edu. Content in ScholarlyCommons@Penn is fully indexed by search engines like Google–a feature that will delight faculty and their colleagues, according to Rogers and Glandt. The technology behind the repository, developed by Proquest Inc. for the Berkeley Electronic Press is, in Rogers’s words, “a good fit at this stage of development”. The software can alert faculty when new contributions appear in their subject areas. The system also tracks downloads and allows Penn authors to gauge interest in their work.

Sandra Kerbel, the Penn Library’s Director for Public Services, is eager to hear reaction to the repository service from faculty around the University. “If the initial feedback from Penn Engineering is any indication, we should see a real surge of interest from other schools and faculties, because nothing quite like the repository exists at Penn and because it addresses a variety of keenly felt needs at the University.” To identify and begin serving those needs, the Library will be monitoring the growth and financial requirements of ScholarlyCommons@Penn with the aim of involving Penn’s other eleven schools and many research centers in the project.

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