Article by Susan Elkins, Digital Resources Librarian, SHSU
Sam Houston State University’s Newton Gresham Library is focused on serving its student and faculty patrons through one-to-one outreach, and electronic services. In particular, the Digital Resources department provides access to SHSU’s growing online collections and scholarly communications resources. This team environment is researching and incorporating new services in conjunction with collection development cultivation. This is a time of growth and change and we are excited about the future at the Newton Gresham Library.
The highlight of this Fall 2016 semester is the creation of the DSpace repository called Scholarly Works @ SHSU. This new repository serves as a place to archive and showcase faculty research and campus events. Because of its newness, our efforts are focused on outreaching to faculty and developing local interest in this new research tool. In a coordinated effort, Erin Cassidy, our Scholarly Communications Librarian, and I are planing a series of speaking engagements within the various college departments on campus. Our hope is to spark interest in this new repository and build new collections from that interest.
An example of one such collection is the Medieval and Renaissance Thought Conference. This conference was held at Sam Houston State University in the Spring 2016. Dr. Caroline Bruzelius’ plenary address about cathedrals and medieval cities. You can view this and other presentations of the conference in Scholarly Works @ SHSU.
As far as our Digital Special Collections are concerned, we continue to utilize ContentDM to hold items from our special collections and university archives. We are also continually adding to our online collections through the scanning of items from the Special Collections department. Our newly hired Special Collections Librarian, Trent Shotwell, enthusiastically provides us with materials such as the John W. Thomason drawings and sports photographs from the 1980’s. He also would be happy to help you with your research and answer questions on how to use these resources in your own research.
On a final note, after a successful pilot project this summer, our graduate students are submitting their electronic theses and dissertations into the Vireo ETD system this semester. This is a coordinated effort with the Office of Graduate Studies involving a reworking of the requirements and workflows of our submission processes. We have been also working with ProQuest and they are ready to accept our electronic submissions. In an effort to make this transitional process as smooth as possible, our Thesis Clerk, Cindy Goode, has been training both students and faculty on the new procedures.