up close with cIRclecelebrating three years21,000 itemsand you

March 10, 2010

cIRcle is an open access digital repository for research and teaching materials created by the UBC community and its partners.

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In April 2006, the UBC Library’s e-Library Committee proposed the creation of an institutional repository to showcase scholarly work online, at no cost to the author or user. A pilot project was launched in spring 2007.

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cIRcle uses software called DSpace, an open-source system developed by MIT and Hewlett-Packard. Over 600 institutions in more than 75 countries use DSpace. UBC is one of them.

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scholarshipincreased visibility

preservation

cIRcle brings UBC’s scholarly output to the world. Search engines like Google and Yahoo crawl the cIRcle database, making materials quick and easy to find.

open access

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In 2010, cIRcle is celebrating its third anniversary, thanks to the hard work and dedication of library staff past and present, technological masterminds near and far, and content contributors from both UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan.

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A year ago, cIRcle celebrated 5,000 items online. Today, we are celebrating 21,000.

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Thanks to UBC Archives, we’ve added 19,000 theses and dissertations online into cIRcle

– and we’ve only just begun.

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cIRcle consists of communities and collections. Communities are UBC departments, labs, research centres, schools, or other administrative units. Collections contain items such as reports, presentations, publications, and more.

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UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) has over five decades of experience in graduate planning, education, and research. SCARP joined cIRcle in 2007. Recent contributions include graduating student and course projects. Watch for faculty work and papers from SCARP’s Centre for Human Settlements in the future.

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In 2007, cIRcle also welcomed the Centre for Health and Environment Research (CHER). CHER’s multidisciplinary team seeks “to research and prevent diseases caused by hazards in outdoor and indoor environments.” (CHER). Collection items include theses, dissertations, and research papers. P

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One of cIRcle’s newest communities is SEEDS, with its student research reports. UBC SEEDS (Social, Ecological, Economic, Development Studies) “combines the energy and enthusiasm of students, the intellectual capacity of faculty and the commitment and expertise of staff to integrate sustainability on campus” (UBC SEEDS Program).

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The cIRcle 2010 Olympics & Paralympics project aims to showcase and preserve UBC’s Olympics inspired research, coursework, and events to the world. The project librarian seeks out faculty, students, and alumni who are discussing, writing, presenting, and researching the many sides of Vancouver 2010.

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Did you know? cIRcle is ranked 77th internationally out of 400 institutional repositories by the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.

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visibility

discovery

preservation

One of the great benefits of cIRcle is that it facilitates multidisciplinary inquiry on campus and beyond...

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Both the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Michael Smith Foundation encourage open

access to research and scholarship. Grant recipients are now required to make published research

available online, for free. Watch for it in cIRcle.

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Providing open access to UBC’s research output makes the dissemination of scholarly information cheaper and easier, making researchers, students, and taxpayers happy. Now that’s money well spent. P

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cIRcle does not require contributors to give up copyright. Our non-exclusive license makes scholarly output openly (and freely) accessible and enables data migration for long term preservation.

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Copyright is protected using creative commons licenses. Users of openly shared materials must acknowledge and cite creators.

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“Finding articles online is really hard and at the same time expensive! Knowing that you can access it for free is really good.”(UBC undergraduate student commenting on cIRcle)

“Nothing makes me strive for excellence more than knowing that anyone in the world could see my work.” (Andre Malan, UBC Undergraduate Student)

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“Every item in cIRcle is bound to increase UBC’s impact.” (John Willinsky, Professor, UBC Faculty of Education)

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cIRcle is located on the second floor of the Walter C. Koerner Library in Room 266.

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The cIRcle Team: (L to R) Hilde Colenbrander, Coordinator; Julia Thompson, Digital Library Assistant; Tara Stephens, 2010 Olympics & Paralympics Project Librarian; Joerg Messer, Programmer/Analyst; Meghan Radomske and Marisa Tutt, Graduate Academic Assistants.

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Visit us online at circle.ubc.ca for a complete list of cIRcle contributors.

Special thanks to all those who have made the past three years a success.

We couldn’t have done it without you.