Aquila to Celebrate One-Millionth Download
University Libraries is hosting a reception to celebrate the upcoming one-millionth full-text download from Aquila, the university’s institutional repository, on September 15 at 3 p.m. in the Cook Library Art Gallery. The campus community is invited to attend, and the winner of the Guess the Date contest will be announced.
Aquila houses research and scholarship created by Southern Miss faculty, staff and students, and most of its content is open access, making it freely available to researchers. Since its launch in January of 2012, items in Aquila have been downloaded by individuals from 27,708 different institutions in 231 countries across six continents.
Aquila began as a joint venture between University Libraries, the Office of Research and the Office of the Provost and was originally conceived as a means of preserving and displaying faculty publications. As Aquila grew and its capabilities became more familiar, it became the repository for student works, event recordings, committee minutes and resolutions, and even served as a publishing platform for academic journals. Now in its sixth year, Aquila also includes research datasets and open textbooks.
“We are celebrating Aquila, but we are also celebrating much more. Each download represents an instance where someone has utilized a resource created by one of our faculty, staff or students. So when we celebrate a million downloads, we are celebrating the fact that there are one million instances where members of the Southern Miss community have been able to make an impact, whether down the street or across the world, through the research that they’ve done,” said Josh Cromwell, University Libraries’ Institutional Repository Coordinator.
To view the downloads taking place all around the world, visit http://aquila.usm.edu and check out the readership map on the home page. For questions or more information, contact Josh Cromwell at 601.266.6200 or .