Fifty million downloads tell the story: UNL scholarship is reaching an unprecedented number of readers worldwide, thanks to the library team’s trailblazing use of their IR. Their philosophy is that DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska – Lincoln belongs to the faculty. UNL libraries extended their vision of library-led publishing to include original faculty scholarship as well as the flourishing Zea Books publishing arm of UNL libraries. (Hear how they did it in UNL’s webinar “Library-Led Publishing: Books and Faculty Monographs.”)
Paul Royster, Coordinator for Scholarly Communications, sums up the importance of this milestone:
“We are delighted to reach this landmark number. It is testimony to the science and creativity of our faculty and other authors and depositors, and we are grateful for their trust and support. Bepress’s Digital Commons makes it possible for our materials to reach users all over the globe and enriches Nebraska’s connections with students and researchers worldwide. It has been a sustained effort by dedicated and energetic people on all sides. Thank you depositors and visitors and well-wishers of all stripes. This is how we are changing scholarly communication.”
Paul points out that the IR is the university’s most visited subdomain, accounting for 15% to 20% of its web traffic. To garner this traffic he stresses leveraging the platform’s SEO strengths by including critical metadata; as Paul says, “No abstract, no point.” Paul’s already looking to the future—“Next milestone is 100,000 items, which should happen sometime in September”—and we’ll be here to salute him and the rest of the library team!
