Janelle Wertzberger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications at Gettysburg College, is an IR All-Star because of her great success building a thriving repository on her small liberal arts campus. Under Janelle’s direction, The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College has become a space for Gettysburg to showcase exemplary student content. In addition to her efforts with undergraduate work, Janelle passionately educates faculty about copyright and open access, working to grow Gettysburg’s publishing program.
With Janelle’s leadership Gettysburg has been able to successfully publish a wide range of student work, including special projects, posters, audio & video work, artwork, and student journals. Bali Soundscapes is a particularly vibrant and unique example of Gettysburg’s undergraduate content: the collection compiles written reflections, audio essays, and images produced by students participating in a Balinese study abroad program. Another example of The Cupola’s diverse student content is Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era, in which special collections serve as a robust pedagogical tool. Janelle has also helped establish a rich collection of undergraduate journals in support of opportunities for students to publish.
Janelle’s leadership and success is largely rooted in her relationship with faculty, for whom she has provided several educational presentations, teaching them about copyright and IRs. She first delivered the presentation “Did I Sign My Rights Away? Copyright for Authors” during a 2014 Open Access week event she helped coordinate. Janelle is particularly proud of this opportunity to educate faculty and students around open access topics. Getting creative with the event, Janelle even made OA logo cookies with a cookie cutter that was created using Gettysburg’s 3D printer!
Janelle has also produced a number of publications and presentations outlining what it’s taken to build Gettysburg’s thriving repository. “Staffing a Library Publishing Program: The Whos, Hows, and Whens” describes how to use existing staff resources to create a powerful publishing program and is a valuable resource for any fledgling repository. Janelle’s Digital Commons webinar “On with the Show! Open Access Publishing as a Local Production” suggests that a successful institutional repository manager at a smaller institution has to be something of an evangelist: someone who has a vision for the services the IR can provide and a gift for telling that story in a way that connects with faculty, administration, researchers—and also fellow librarians.
You can read more about Janelle and her contributions to the scholarly communications community on her SelectedWorks profile. Congratulations, Janelle!
