Guest post by Alicia Pucci, Travis Nace, and Rebecca Lloyd 

Five years ago, Temple University took the first step toward increasing the global visibility and public value of Temple scholarship with the launch of our institutional repository, TUScholarShare. The platform allows Temple scholars to share, promote, and archive a range of research and teaching outputs. As part of this year’s International Open Access Week (October 20-26th), the Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Strategic Steering Team (SCSST) hosted an event in Charles Library on October 21st to proudly celebrate TUScholarShare’s anniversary and all those across our Temple community who have contributed to its success.  

The hour-and-a-half catered event kicked off with opening remarks from Joe Lucia, Dean of Libraries, who reflected on the pivotal role institutional repositories play in helping the communities they serve reassert control over the knowledge they produce. Alicia Pucci, Assistant Director for Scholarly Communications and TUScholarShare’s Administrator, followed with a presentation that showcased the initiative’s milestones and global impact and demonstrated its upgraded platform.  

The highlight of the event was the series of engaging lightning talks from repository contributors across the campus community who have used or considered using TUScholarShare to meet their strategic goals and share their work with audiences well beyond Temple. Presenters and their topics included: 

• Dr. Adrienne Shaw, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Production, Klein College of Media and Communication, shared her experiences using TUScholarShare’s quick deposit form to submit teaching and learning materials and the CV review service to deposit her own scholarship. 

• Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief of Temple University Press, discussed how Temple University Press established a workflow and collection to archive supplemental materials for their books, demonstrating the ways the repository can help support traditionally published scholarship.  

• Caroline Burkholder, Senior Sustainability Manager, Office of Sustainability, showcased their office’s interdisciplinary Climate Change, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice collection and explained how TUScholarShare has been built into their Sustainability Action Plan to serve Temple’s sustainability mission. 

• Will Dean, Research and Data Services Librarian, Ginsburg Health Sciences Library, and Travis Nace, Research and Instruction Librarian, Ginsburg Health Sciences Library, highlighted the repository’s Research Data collection, statistics, and workflow for depositing datasets, with a specific focus on evidence synthesis search data deposits.

• Dr. Marisa Rose, Professor of Clinical Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services, Assistant Dean for Phase 3, Director of the FMSE program, Lewis Katz School of Medicine, discussed how her program is considering TUScholarShare to support the research outputs of their Faculty Mentored Scholarly Experience (FMSE) and provide graduate students with an alternative publishing option. 

Attendees, who spanned Temple’s schools and offices, were given the opportunity to ask presenters questions and connect with Library staff members of the TUScholarShare team in the social half-hour that followed. Those in attendance also enjoyed celebratory cherry and white birthday cupcakes and were encouraged to share their feedback on the repository via a suggestion gift box.  

During the event, a table in the atrium promoted TUScholarShare and asked visitors at Charles Library to vote on three design options for the repository’s new logo, which were created by Joi Waller, the Libraries’ Senior Web/Graphic Designer. The engaging activity drew a predominantly student audience and prompted questions about what an institutional repository is and how they might benefit from using it. The logos received mixed feedback, with many comments connecting the graphics to the ideas of scholarship, inclusivity, or a repository (i.e., a sort of box).  

If you were unable to attend the event, you can visit the Temple University Libraries collection in TUScholarShare to access slides from all the presentations. Consider exploring the repository to see the scholarly work of our Temple community and check out the suite of deposit services to contribute your own. Here’s to continuing to make our knowledge more open and accessible together through TUScholarShare!