Digital Commons

Introducing the Digital Commons Law Network

Representing over 50 law schools, the DC Network is one of the biggest open-access collections of law scholarship in the world and includes material from top schools like Duke, Yale, UC Berkeley, Northwestern, Cornell and Georgetown. Showcasing law review articles, book chapters, briefs, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work, the Digital Commons law network is completely open access, meaning researchers will never run into paywalls or empty records—only full-text, open access research and scholarship are included.

Building a Successful Law Repository with Limited Resources

Institutional repositories (IRs) aren't just for big schools with big budgets; they are quickly developing into essential components of every law library’s information architecture in the digital age. With the right technology and a clear vision in place, institutions of any size can build a successful showcase for the full range of their research and scholarship.

At Santa Clara Law School, David Holt has strategically leveraged limited resources to build Santa Clara Law Digital Commons into a rich and diverse repository that already contains nearly 4,000 objects and has logged over 300,000 downloads from over 150 countries in the past year—all without a single full-time employee exclusively devoted to the project. In this webinar, David outlines some keys to his success:

• Defining the mission and setting goals for the repository
• Developing collections: Law reviews, special collections, faculty publications, and beyond
• Distributing workflows economically
• Encouraging faculty participation
• Promoting the IR

The presentation is of interest for law schools who are considering launching a repository as well as those who are in the mature stages of their IR initiatives.

Yale Presents: Institutional Repositories and Law Reviews

Yale has one of the most successful law repositories in North America. In this webinar, Julian Aiken (Access Services Librarian) and Fred Shapiro (Associate Librarian for Collections and Access) share how they are using the repository to extend the reach of Yale's legal scholarship and enhance the library and the law school's value within the law community.

Topics include:

• Why a repository for the law school?
• Workflow and staffing for the IR
• Publicizing the IR
• Increasing global reach of the IR

Digital Commons for Law Schools

An overview of some of the benefits that a digital repository can bring to your law school, such as increased exposure for programs, centers, and institutes; expanded global readership; professional online publication of law reviews and archives; and dissemination of the full range of the scholarship produced at the law school, including conferences, books, images, lectures, and “born digital” objects.

Owning the Online Future of Your Law Review

Online publication of law reviews through Digital Commons is a sustainable publishing solution that promotes greater discoverability, easier access, and more citations to your articles.

Duke Presents: Institutional Repositories and Law Reviews

Delivering nearly 10,000 objects and close to 2 million downloads to a global audience, the Duke Law Scholarship Repository is making itself an indispensable resource for legal scholars and practitioners. In this webinar, Hollie White, Digital Initiatives Librarian at Duke Law, shows how Duke is using its repository to extend the reach of its legal scholarship, with a particular emphasis on publishing and archiving law reviews.

Topics include:

• Batch loading law review archives from Hein
• Working with law-review metadata
• Process, workflow, and quality control for the law review
• Using video and images

Institutional Repositories: Solving Problems for Law Schools

Is your legal scholarship achieving its full value in its current form? Is there a cheaper, better way to publish student-edited law journals? Todd Melnick, Associate Librarian for Public Services at Fordham Law School Library, shares how his library has utilized an institutional repository as a response to these and other timely questions facing law schools today.

Over the last two years, Fordham Law Library has developed its institutional repository to include the archives of its 6 law reviews and over 6,000 open access items. Todd discusses the surprising results of making this work digital and open access, and also covers the distributed management model used to enable law review editors to do the lion's share of the archiving work.

Digitally Archiving your Law Reviews: from Planning to Population

Last year, the William & Mary law library uploaded 5,000 documents to their institutional repository in little over 3 months. The documents include the complete archives of five law reviews, spanning more than 50 years of scholarly publications. Over the last year, these collections have garnered more than 400,000 downloads from a global audience.

Lauren Seney and Linda Tesar, who led the effort to archive W&M’s law reviews, share their experiences in this webinar. Topics include: essential components, best practices, and strategies for archiving law reviews online.

Digital Commons @ UGA School of Law: A Cornucopia of Content

The University of Georgia law library has one of the most long standing and successful law repositories in the world. With the leadership of Carol Watson, DigitalCommons@University of Georgia School of Law regularly delivers a wide and impressive range of open access legal scholarship to a global audience.

They are not alone. Almost 30 law schools have followed their lead and established their own law-specific repositories in the past 3 years. As law repositories grow exponentially, more and more law libraries are looking for guidance – to make the case, to plan smartly, to staff efficiently, and most of all, to ensure and increase buy in every year.

In this webinar, Carol explores strategies for creating and developing an institutional repository at a law school, including building repository content beyond faculty scholarship.