OLATHE, KAN., — MidAmerica Nazarene University recently announced plans to develop an MNU Institutional Repository. The repository will contain faculty research articles and related scholarship, openly accessible to scholars via the Internet.
According to Bruce Flanders, director of Mabee Library at MNU, the repository will be a comprehensive, freely accessible, online compilation of academic resources created at MNU.
“We plan to include outstanding examples of student scholarship as well as faculty members’ traditional research articles, and monographs, theses and dissertations, book chapters, technical reports, graphical images, video, PowerPoint slide sets, and other multi-media academic content,” he said. “This repository will be broad in scope, covering all academic disciplines.”
Flanders says large research universities often have such repositories. One such repository is KU ScholarWorks, from the University of Kansas.
“The library faculty at KU have been so helpful to provide insight into how to develop our repository in the most effective way,” Flanders said.
During the upcoming International Open Access Week, Oct. 20-26, Flanders has invited the head of the Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright, Ada Emmett, and Dr. Marc L. Greenberg, department chair of the Germanic Languages and Literatures, both of KU, to speak to MNU faculty about open access publishing of scholarly works.
Flanders says the repository’s goals include the following:
• Highlight faculty research and pioneer a major digital archive;
• Make research more accessible, augmenting subscription-based scholarly publishing with open-access resources;
• Preserve and maintain scholarly content in an environment in which file format technology is updated as needed;
• Increase faculty leadership and visibility in various academic fields, with the potential to develop collaborations, grant funding, and additional publication.
While such repositories are not unique, the ability to start one without incurring significant cost is unusual. MNU’s project will be built on the Church of the Nazarene’s Wesleyan-Holiness Digital Library (WHDL) publishing platform developed by the denominations’ International Board of Education (IBOE).
This will allow MNU to conform to digital repository standards, while avoiding typical development and maintenance costs. MNU institution will be the first Nazarene University to use the WHDL in this manner, and Flanders expects other U.S. and international universities to quickly follow.
“The WHDL is a robust online publishing platform with advanced features, such as the ability to accommodate multi-lingual content,” Flanders said. “We are thrilled to be using the WHDL to develop this important new academic resource.”
The MNU Institutional Repository is projected to be operational in spring 2015.
ABOUT MNU
MidAmerica Nazarene University is a private, Christian, liberal arts university founded in 1966. Offering 40 plus traditional undergraduate majors, the university is also known for its accelerated professional and graduate programs, including undergraduate degrees in management and nursing and graduate degrees in business, education, nursing, and counseling, and postgraduate certificates. Online offerings include classes in education, nursing and associate’s-level studies. Study abroad as well as service-learning experiences are encouraged through MNU’s Go Global, MNU Europe, and ServiceCorps programs. The campus is located on 105 acres in Olathe, Kan., and operates a location in Liberty, Mo., for professional and graduate programs. More information may be found at www.mnu.edu.