General Questions
1. Who do I contact with questions?
Contact the Digital Services & Scholarly Communication unit.
2. What is a digital repository and what does it provide Texas A&M?
A repository provides increased access to the products of the University's research and scholarship endeavors, fosters the preservation of these digital works for future generations, promotes increasingly rapid advances in scholarly communication, and helps deepen community understanding of the value of higher education. A digital repository provides persistent and reliable access to the digital works of faculty, staff, and students, as well as greater dissemination of these works.
The Texas A&M Digital Repository collects, records, provides access to, and archives the research and scholarship of Texas A&M University. The Repository contains digital works that reflect the intellectual and service environment of the campus, including electronic theses and dissertations, digitized materials from the Library's holdings, peer previewed journal articles, data sets, presentations, newsletters, conference papers, etc..
The Repository is an important tool to preserve the scholarly legacy of Texas A&M.
3. Why should I submit works to the Texas A&M Digital Repository?
Wider dissemination: The Repository increases the visibility of, and access to, your research through metadata harvesters such as Google and Google Scholar, OAIster, and other services. Due to increased dissemination, works made available in the Repository lead to greater impact and citation of your research.
Long-term preservation and access: The Repository provides a permanent web address for your work and commits to responsible and sustainable management of submitted works.
Rights retention: You or your assignee retains copyright of works you submit to the Repository. Many publishers will allow you to submit previously published works to institutional repositories.
Low or No Cost: The Repository is a service provided at little or no cost by Texas A&M University Libraries to the Texas A&M University scholarly community. For grant funded projects using the Repository to store and share research data, the Libraries will assess a modest one-time fee.
4. Who can search, browse, and download from the Texas A&M Digital Repository?
In most cases, items in the Digital Repository are freely available to all. An author or Collection Administrator may choose to submit a work but restrict access.
5. Who can submit works to the Texas A&M Digital Repository?
Texas A&M faculty, staff, and students may submit work to the Repository.
- Student work must be sponsored by either a faculty member or an undergraduate research program, and will need authorization by the Collection Administrator or Repository manager first.
- Staff must be authorized by a Collection Administrator or Repository manager before submitting items to the Repository.
- Faculty are pre-authorized to submit items to the Faculty Publications collection. They will need authorization of a Collection Administrator or Repository manager to submit into other collections.
6. How is using the Texas A&M Digital Repository different from posting research on my own web site?
The Repository provides benefits that may not be available on your own web site:
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- full-text indexing of text files
- enhanced discoverability through Google Scholar, OAIster, and other search engines that deliver scholarly material
- a permanent and persistent web address for your work so that it may be reliably cited over time
- long term storage of works
7. Can I provide a link to my work in the Repository from my own web site?
Yes. One benefit of submitting to the Repository is that your work is assigned a permanent and persistent web address.
8. How is the Texas A&M Digital Repository organized?
The Repository uses DSpace software, which supports a simple hierarchy structure composed of Communities and Collections. Communities in the Texas A&M Digital Repository may be colleges, departments, research centers, or other groups. Communities contain Collections, and Collections hold digital works.
There are essentially two types of Collections in the Repository. One is exclusively for faculty-authored publications. All Texas A&M faculty are automatically authorized to deposit their works in this collection. The second type is a Sponsored Collection.
Repository managers can assist departments and research units in establishing sponsored collections in the appropriate Repository community. Refer to the Collections page for more information, or contact us.
9. I have print copies of materials I'd like digitized for the Repository. Can you scan the items for me?
No, we do not offer digitization services at this time. We can recommend best practices for scanning, file formats, etc.