Library

Brandeis Library Launches New Digital Services to More Deeply Engage with the Mission of the University

The Brandeis Library is pleased to announce the formal launch of a new research repository along with a new platform for other types of digital collections. This repository will continue the library’s mission to collect, preserve, and disseminate digital copies of the intellectual output of Brandeis. This will split Brandeis-created content and digitized content, currently held in the Brandeis Institutional Repository.

Brandeis ScholarWorks has formally launched and represents a bold step forward as the Library engages and supports the university’s research mission. ScholarWorks replaces the former Brandeis Institutional Repository (BIR) and will go well beyond it in scope. Our vision for the repository is that it fully and completely represents Brandeis contributions to the scholarly and creative communities. It also allows us to fully meet our obligations to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. In the future, it may help bring together faculty profiles, help measure the impact of Brandeis research, and match Brandeis researchers with potential collaborators as well as funding opportunities.

Library staff have been working to link as many University outputs as possible, and this work will continue over the course of 2021. This will include the traditional outputs of journal articles, book chapters, books, research data, etc., as well as creative outputs in the arts and music, conference presentations, and more. ScholarWorks will provide citation information for most Brandeis scholarship with links to publisher platforms, as well as full text to open access publications and/or pre-prints.

The primary goal for this repository is to partner with key stakeholders in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the Office of Institutional Research in order to draw attention to Brandeis contributions to the scholarly community.

In addition to Brandeis ScholarWorks, the Library has migrated other digital collections, including the digital collections of the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections, to Brandeis Distinctive Collections (part of the Library’s OneSearch platform). New types of digital collections have already been added, giving the library the ability to host many new forms of digital scholarship, including student work. This will mean a fully unified search experience for all of the Brandeis Library’s digital collections in one place for our community. The new platform also allows us the opportunity to provide even more unique, digital collections in a variety of formats, including streaming audio and streaming video. Enhancements to the metadata and the platform will be ongoing, along with the addition of new, unique collections.

The Library looks forward to providing these platforms for all types of new, creative forms of scholarship.