Smith ScholarWorks Turns 10!

This spring is ScholarWorks’ 10-year anniversary. It got me thinking about anniversaries and I wondered, what is the traditional gift for 10-year anniversaries? Tin, as it turns out. Why tin, you ask? (Well, I at least asked). It is because tin represents resilience and flexibility. ScholarWorks has certainly represented both those traits. We started out with a few hundred uploads and 10 years later we have over 7,000 works.

The strength of the repository is its content. As I try to highlight here each month, the scholarly output of this college is not just impressive and edifying, but the contributions that our digital open access repository makes to the global commons of shared knowledge, scholarship, and research is tremendously important as a fact but also as an ideal. The reach is truly global with nearly 4.5 million downloads of work! The content and reach have grown exponentially and that is resilience in action. At a time when subscription models and disappearing data are serious concerns, having control of our scholarship and sharing out with open licensing matters now more than ever. Our open access policy is instrumental to our continuing resilience in these interesting times.

We have also expanded what we share. In 2016 we added articles and ETDs (electronic theses and dissertations). Ten years later we have podcasts, data sets, open educational resources, audio files, performances, journals, posters and more from departments, concentrations, and centers and institutes of the college. The idea of a digital repository has changed and we have been flexible enough to change along with it.  What will the next ten years bring?….that’s a potentially scary question so let’s just celebrate our first ten years!

Congratulations Smith College; the collective scholarly work that we are able to share with the world confirms all that we value here: knowledge, community, generosity. Cheers!

Smith ScholarWorks is Smith’s institutional repository of digital scholarship and research materials created and curated by faculty, students, and staff at Smith College. Browse by collections, disciplines, and authors.