Kraemer Family Library part of multi-library partnership to improve access to scholarship

The libraries of four higher education systems in Colorado will launch Digital Collections of Colorado to improve access to digital information created by faculty, students and staff.

The libraries of Colorado State University, the University of Colorado, Colorado Mesa University, and Colorado School of Mines entered into a partnership with the vendor Ex Libris. The Morgan Library at Colorado State University in Fort Collins is hosting the service and providing staff support. By using the company’s DigiTool software, the libraries created the Digital Collections of Colorado repository for managing and making available digital files representing all manner of scholarly works over the Internet.

“I am very pleased that the University of Colorado Colorado Springs is a member of the Digital Collections of Colorado developed by the CU and CSU libraries,” Teri Switzer, dean, Kraemer Family Library, said. “This shared service digital repository is an important tool in the management, dissemination, and preservation of UCCS’ scholarship and intellectual property.”

Digital Collections of Colorado can be accessed at http://digitool.library.colostate.edu/R. The UCCS repository information page is available at http://www.uccs.edu/library/services/repository.html

A key goal of the multi-library partnership is to provide easy access to significant scholarly works created on the campuses of the four systems to all users – locally in Colorado, nationally and internationally. The libraries also wish to use DigiTool to help individual researchers and scholars maximize their impact by advancing knowledge and science more quickly. By making such scholarship available online, the libraries hope to assist their campuses in demonstrating the breadth, quality, and scope of research and scholarly activities conducted.

An important objective is to deliver value on the investments made by Colorado citizens, the U.S. Federal Government, and public and private granting agencies by making the products of funded research such as academic papers and digital recordings more readily available to all.

In the UCCS Digital Repository, the scholarly files being made accessible will include digital versions of dissertations awarded by the university, papers by faculty in PDF format, digital photographs, maps and images of artifacts in in campus collections.

Anything “born digital,” or originally in print and subsequently digitized, and of a scholarly nature can be added to the repository. The service provides a means to store the files while also making them searchable on the Internet.