Carol Watson, Director of the Law Library, is an IR pioneer and one of bepress’s 2013 All Stars. As an early advocate for including a broad range of materials in the IR, Carol first wrote about her approach in a March 2008 white paper detailing the University of Georgia School of Law’s decision to implement their IR, Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. Co-authored with another strong IR talent, James Donovan, the paper changed the way that law schools viewed IRs.
While building strong collections of traditional faculty scholarship, Carol and the UGA Law Library Digital Commons team also leveraged the repository to serve departments and offices across the law school and represent the full range of the institution’s intellectual and community life. The Library has made great friends with the communications department by making the press releases available and easy discoverable online. The alumni office appreciates having the alumni magazine, donor reports, and old photo directories included in the IR, and uses the digital archive to support class reunions and other alumni events. Administrative materials , including Deans’ reports, handbooks, and catalogs, also have a home in the repository so that current students and alumni can access past course registration materials and schedules for exams, classes, and orientations. Some of the most popular collections Carol has advocated for including in the repository are the guest lectures and presentations and an online exhibition of the law school’s important photos and documents relating to the Nuremberg Trials. Visitors can also study the state’s legal history in the form of its legal codes, dating all the way back to 1799.
In addition to capturing academic, administrative, and historical documents, Carol is a proponent of conveying something of the law school’s ethos, which has led her team to include something most unusual—a gallery of portraits and other art work owned by the law school, as well as social and cultural items like this invitation to the Lawyer Hop from 1898. By bringing traditional legal scholarship together with a rich record of the law school’s history, Carol’s vision and leadership have shaped Digital Commons @ Georgia Law into a resource that benefits the whole community.
You can listen to Carol as she describes her approach to building her collections or check out her work at her Selected Works Site: http://works.bepress.com/carol_watson/.
To learn more about bepress’s 2013 IR All-Stars, see our announcement here.
