OCAD U Library 2016 Winter: Library News

What is Open Research Repository?

Open Research is OCAD University's institutional repository. A repository is a place to store, manage, and display digital content. Academic institutions across Canada and all over the world maintain repositories to preserve and share the research output of their faculty, staff, and students. Unlike commercial social networking sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu, institutional repositories are managed by librarians in support of long-term preservation with quality metadata and stable URLs. 

Benefits include:

• Increased impact and citation of research outputs produced by the OCAD U community
• Long-term preservation 
• Stable, unchanging URLs 
• Quality metadata
• Context within an OCAD U-branded repository
• Compliance with Tri-Agency Open Access Policy (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR)
• A response to the crisis in academic subscriptions (see recent news stories here, here, and here for examples)

Currently Open Research contains journal articles, ebooks, reports, conference/workshop items, graduate theses, and major research papers/projects (MRPs). We are interested in exploring pilot projects to expand on these deposit types to include patents, art/design items, exhibitions, performances, or teaching resources. 

Get involved: Interested in reaching more readers by opening up your research? Looking for a stable place to archive your work? See our deposit guide for instructions for self deposit. To propose a digital project, or for more information, or for support in the deposit process, contact Chris Landry, Scholarly Communications Librarian. 

Save Money! Avoid Library Fines!

In our on-going project of helping you avoid fines; you now can:

• renew overdue books online even if there are unpaid fines on your account.

Previously, overdue items could not be renewed, and accounts with outstanding fines had online privileges blocked. We hope these changes will help everyone save money!

Get More Books!

OCAD U students may borrow books directly from most Canadian university libraries. If you’re visiting a library outside Ontario, to borrow material you:

• require a valid OCAD U ID card AND
• may also need an Inter-University Borrowing Project (IUBP) card . These are available in the library at the Circulation Desk (contact ext. 358 for more information).

For more information, consult the Canadian University Reciprocal Borrowing Agreement website, or talk to our library staff in-person for details.