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In April 2011, Drake Memorial Library, The College at Brockport honored faculty authors who had published books, articles or other materials during 2005-2010.  Similar to many academic libraries, Drake had a long tradition of compiling bibliographies of faculty authorship.  We’ve usually undertaken this initiative every five years – working in advance of Middle States reviewers providing additional incentive.  

The rationale for this project was straightforward:

• to increase the visibility of campus scholarship both within and beyond the college community;
• to share the production of new research;
• and, to highlight and enhance scholarly communication

In the past, similar compilations were highly labor and time intensive with multiple checks done by librarians and numerous updates and corrections.  Our most recent iteration was also an intensive effort, but the workflow was different with the addition of database harvesting, easier sorting and the creation of an online site for new works.  Student assistants helped with much of the finding and formatting of citations. A direct call to authors resulted in acquiring information on additional works.  Librarians and students worked on pulling and printing articles for display in the library lobby.

The April 8th celebration coincided with American Library Week.  It also complemented Brockport Scholar’s Day, an event feting student scholarship.  Faculty were invited to the "Celebration of Faculty and Staff Scholarship", asked to sign library-owned copies of their works, and honored at an afternoon reception in the library.  The original menu included book-shaped cookies as well as sweets with the College’s 175th anniversary logo. 

As announced during the event, the online bibliography was designed to be a living document that can be searched by keyword, author, department and school. The bibliography has a significant advantage over previous print copies in that it includes links to full text for many of the articles listed.

Faculty reaction has been positive and a first step toward the Digital Commons-based initiative. The faculty author database is viewed as a precursor to this fall’s campuswide rollout of the Digital Commons system that will provide a more integrated digital showcase for faculty scholarship, online journals, local archival materials and more. As an example, see Buffalo State’s version.
 
Special thanks to Brockport librarians and staff including Pat Maxwell, Mary McGonigal, Wendy Price, Logan Rath, as well as library student assistants - Emily Fulkerson, Kerrie Keenahan, Megan Webb-Morgan, and other campus partners for their efforts.