Open Access and Scholarly Communication at Ferris State University: Institutional Repositories

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY (Wikipedia):

(IR) is an online archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution.

An institutional repository can be viewed as a a set of services that a university offers to members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. For a university, this includes materials such as monographs, academic journal articles, both before (preprints) and after (postprints) undergoing peer review, as well as electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).

An institutional repository might also include other digital assets generated by academics, such as administrative documents, course notes, learning objects, or conference proceedings. Deposit of material in an institutional repository is sometimes mandated by that institution.

Central Michigan University

Eastern Michigan University

Ferris State University

Grand Valley State University

Michigan Technological University

Northern Michigan University

Oakland University

University of Michigan Ann Arbor

Wayne State University

Western Michigan University

FIR (Ferris Instituitonal Repository) is a digital service that collects, preserves, and distributes digital material. Repositories are important tools for preserving an organization's legacy; they facilitate digital preservation and scholarly communication.

FIR provides a place to store, provide access to, and preserve digital objects and resources created in and used by the Ferris community.  This includes administrative documents, research and working papers, faculty-created learning tools (including animations and videos), digitized archival resources, and more.

FIR brings together resources from the many elements that make up Ferris State University and make them accessible to the entire Ferris community.  FIR also provides a single place where objects and resources created at Ferris can be accessed throughout the world. 

FIR gives FSU faculty and staff:

 A Digital Storage space for your digital objects and resources.  Items deposited in FIR will be:

•     Accessible
•     Migrated to new formats for future accessibility (if possible)
•     Digitally preserved and backed up   

A visible presence for your data, research and teaching objects on the World Wide Web.  FIR can:

•    Replace the need to maintain a personal web site.
•    Make your research and teching searchable and findable by Web search engines.
•    Report on how many times your files were accessed  

More opportunities to promote your work.  FIR:

•    Provides a permanent URL so that objects can always be found.
•    Lets other researchers and teachers find your work and use it and cite it.
•    Lets you distribute your work simply, by sending the URL to colleagues.

Columbia University Librarian James Neal discusses the multifaceted role online repositories, such as Columbia's Academic Commons, are playing in the scholarly communication system.