Library Introduces the Digital Commons

The LIU University libraries introduce the new Digital Commons repository to students via university email. The digital repository will act as a base to share and save works by students and faculty. Chosen compositions will be highlighted and placed in a Special Collections and Archives section. According to the email, compositions will include journal articles, working papers, technical reports, campus publications, university documents, conference papers, presentations, dissertation abstracts, images and videos. The materials in the Digital Commons will be available, free of charge, to the entire world.

The repository will be administered by LIU University libraries. The software is hosted by a company called bepress. It was added to LIU as a way to highlight student scholarship library faculty and repository coordinator Natalia Tomlin said. There is a great chance of searching for material and it being brought up through Google. “Repository content is indexed in major search engines such as Google.” Uniquely, readers are able to see where on the globe other readers are viewing documents through the Earth map at the bottom of the home page.

Chloe Margulis, a computer science graduate of the Honors College, was able to see that her senior thesis was viewed nearly 40 times throughout the world. Margulis’ mathematical thesis, The Application of Big Data Analytics to Patent Litigation is one of the five original pieces uploaded so far to the Digital Commons. According to Tomlin, Margulis’ work was viewed in the America, Canada, France, Japan, and Switzerland. “In a year or so, this student could possibly have her name cited in someone’s research.”

Now that the repository is available, any student interested publishing his or her work in the Digital Commons can do so with the approval of a faculty member. A Member Approval Form, found on the homepage of the Digital Commons site, must be filled out by the student and a faculty member of their choice to obtain permission to post. Work can be submitted to the repository by uploading a typed document or scanning a written document. Images and videos may also be uploaded. Once uploaded, authors receive an email with submission status with a URL for work to be accessed and shared through social media, professional profiles, and especially digital portfolios.

The Digital Commons became a thought to the University in November of 2015 as part of the LIU 2020 Strategic Plan developed by faculty and administrators. Local schools such as Hofstra Law School, Stony Brook, and St. Joseph’s have Digital Commons whereas Adelphi, Nassau, and Farmingdale State do not. Officially, the platform became accessible to LIU in fall of 2016 and is now open for student publishing. There will be an instructional video on the main page of the Digital Commons site for understanding how to upload. According to the email, faculty members will be invited to an information session to learn about the repository and ways they can contribute as resources. “The more active [LIU Digital Commons] is the more Google hits it will receive,” Tomlin said. The Digital Commons can be accessed by logging onto digitalcommons.liu.edu.