Earlier this year, we reached a
significant milestone in the development of a library service program in which DePaul University faculty have played a key part – the one-millionth full-text download from our institutional repository, Via.
Via is the cornerstone of our expanding platform for promoting library publishing, providing scholarly communications outreach and education, and increasing the reach and impact for scholarly work produced by DePaul faculty, staff, and students. Currently housing an array of traditional scholarly materials, including undergraduate research journals, conference proceedings, electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), and peer-reviewed journals, Via is a flexible platform for the preservation and provision of open access to the products of digital scholarship and to an increasing variety of student works produced as part of courses in the digital humanities and data-intensive social sciences. When speaking about the Journal of Religion and Business Ethics that they co-edit, Professors Thomas O’Brien and Scott Paeth (Religious Studies) noted that they could not have launched the journal (now beginning production on its fourth volume) without Via. Professor Euan Hague (Geography) has similarly noted how the Map of the Month project, also hosted on Via, “helps highlight the strengths of DePaul’s program.” By committing in recent years to the expansion of both our library publishing program and the recruitment of new content for Via, the library has supported faculty and student researchers in departments such as Modern Languages, colleges such as the College of Science and Health and the College of Law, and university-wide programs such as University Honors, and the DePaul Art Museum.
There are currently over 8,100 items available through the Via institutional repository, including almost 400 items submitted in just the past 30 days. Via brings DePaul University scholarship to the world, with over 200,000 full-text downloads in FY15 (and almost 1,100,000 since its launch), and active users from all 50 states and more than 175 countries around the world. Some of the most popular resources downloaded from Via over the past 30 days have included the DePaul Law Review, the Vincentian Heritage Journal, and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences ETDs. On March 8, 2016, alone, 294 unique users downloaded almost 1,000 items from Via.
Via is one of several platforms that the DePaul University Library employs to provide a full array of digital scholarship services to its faculty, staff, and students, and it is also an essential component of our collaboration with colleagues outside Academic Affairs, including DePaul Athletics, the Office of Mission and Values, the Office of Public Relations and Communications, and the Division of Enrollment Management and Marketing. If you wish to discuss how Via might be employed to preserve and provide global access to your work, or the work of your students, please review some of our “success stories” and contact your liaison librarian to learn more about how the library can extend the reach of your work.