BearWorks Institutional Repository
September 2016: The MSU Libraries did a soft launch of BearWorks, an institutional repository (IR) for Missouri State University. Institutional repositories are archives for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the intellectual output of an organization. They are particularly common in research institutions and often include not only articles and reports, but also organizational documents, data sets, and even multimedia.Graduate theses were the first records entered into BearWorks. As of spring 2017 there were over 3,000 citations with full text available for approximately 1,700 of them. For theses that have been made available for open access, close to 7,000 downloads have occurred to locations all around the world. During the rest of 2017 the Libraries and Graduate College will be working to have graduate students enter their theses directly into BearWorks, replacing an existing home-grown submission system.
Articles published by faculty is another area of concentration for 2017. Working with the Office of Institutional Research, the Libraries is using publication data from Digital Measures to identify faculty articles. After verifying citations and publication status, librarians upload the data to BearWorks. If permitted by the copyright holder, the full text will be uploaded as well.
Curated by the Missouri State University Libraries, BearWorks is funded by the Office of the Provost, the Graduate College, and the MSU Libraries. Questions about BearWorks, including how to submit content, can be sent to BearWorks@library.missouristate.edu.