National award presented to University Libraries

The Association of College and Research Libraries named Grand Valley University Libraries recipient of the 2012 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.

ACRL President Joyce Ogburn came on March 20 from Utah to present the $3,000 award and a plaque, during a reception on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus. The award recognizes Grand Valley’s exemplary services and resources to further the educational mission of the institution. Also noted was the University Libraries’ leadership in developing programs, tools and best practices that other libraries have emulated.

One example of leadership was the recent user group meeting provided for current Digital Commons users in Michigan, which drew attendees from Hope College, Wayne State University, Western Michigan University, Grand Rapids Community College, Baker College and Eastern Michigan University. Grand Valley is using the Digital Commons platform to provide worldwide open access to scholarly and creative works by faculty and staff members and students through the ScholarWorks@GVSU repository.

“More than 3,300 items were added to the repository in 2011,” said Lee VanOrsdel, University Libraries dean. “Items were downloaded more than 140,000 times, and users came from 145 countries and all 50 states.” 

University Libraries is now partnering with a host of campus units to put their publications into the repository and is working with individual faculty members to provide hosting services for scholarly journals and open access textbooks. The Digital Commons platform also allows the Libraries to host conference papers and presentations. Researchers who want to publish in a regular journal, but make their article open access, now have access to funds, provided by the Libraries through the Center for Scholarly and Creative Excellence, to pay for article processing fees.

“There are huge changes occurring in scholarly publication,” said VanOrsdel. “Through these new services, University Libraries is actively deepening our expertise and growing our capacity to support, preserve and disseminate the scholarly and creative works produced within the university.”