Today’s undergraduate students, born between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, are the first members of Generation Z to attend college.1 Born at the same time as the World Wide Web, this generation is the first to be com- prised of true digital natives.2 Not only do Generation Z students possess a digital savvy beyond cut-and-paste and have the skills to be producers and re-users of content, they also come to the classroom with technology ready in hand.3 They have expectations that all information can be found quickly and that support should be available 24/7.4 Given their easy and ubiquitous access to the technological tools and services of the peer-to-peer sharing economy, Generation Z is entrepreneurial in nature “with nearly half want- ing to start their own business.”5 However, these students are not equally savvy with copyright law, either in understanding their rights as creators or the contours of copyright exemptions for users, like fair use.
Many universities have implemented faculty profile systems that capture faculty and researchers’ scholarly outputs and activities. These systems usually include public profiles and tools to help find collaborators or experts. They may be used to create reports for faculty annual reviews or for promotion and tenure, or to assist faculty with complying with open access policies by facilitating deposit in institutional repositories. In many universities, libraries play a central role in the implementation of these systems. This paper explores three case studies showing how and why libraries came into this role and examines some of the consequences of this trend.
Book: Do you daydream about a simple solution for collecting, preserving, and sharing your institution’s digital content online? Do you know that an institutional repository is that solution but have no idea where to begin? Has the allure of an IR given way to the difficulties and practicalities of implementing one? The editors of The Institutional Repository: Benefits and Challenges have called on expert authors to offer practical advice on:
Creating, implementing, maintaining, and marketing an IR;
Open access policies; and
Copyright issues.
This collection arms readers with the information they need to begin planning a successful institutional repository.