The University of Richmond is finding their live Readership Activity Maps so effective at conveying the global reach of their scholarship that they now feature the maps on several external departmental homepages on the University’s website in addition to their map on the IR’s homepage, UR Scholarship Repository. The library, IT, and the Communications teams found that they can all partner on this project in an excellent example of cross-campus engagement with the IR.
Lucretia McCulley, Head of Scholarly Communications at the University of Richmond, has forged a close relationship with the Web and Communications Offices on campus. She’s been working with them to connect the university’s website to the UR Scholarship Repository more closely in order to improve the visibility of the IR and demonstrate its impact.
As a result, many departments are now featuring the Readership Activity Maps on their websites, such as English; Computer Science; Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Math; Rhetoric; Religious Studies; and Political Science.
In further collaboration, Lucretia said that the Communications staff links faculty publication pages on the institutional site to specific articles in the repository (click the “Publications” tab), driving additional traffic to the IR.
The university cares about demonstrating the success of its departments, and the maps make an easy-to-read, dynamic visual aid. In response to a request to make the maps fit more neatly within the departmental websites, University of Richmond’s bepress Consultant removed the “bepress” logo from the external maps. Contact your Consulting Services Representative at bepress to implement Readership Activity Maps at your institution.
