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- All Subjects: Dissertations, Academic
- All Subjects: Academic libraries--Space utilization
Objectives: While PhD dissertations are typically accessible as part of a university library’s general collection, or as content within a proprietary database, many other terminal degree projects remain invisible and inaccessible to a greater audience. This poster will describe the development and creation of a digital repository collection containing doctor of nursing practice (DNP) student’s final projects.
Methods: The “Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Final Projects Collection” was created over the course of one semester and included initial discussions with program faculty and administrators, the creation of a student consent form, the development of a process for adding student work to the repository collection, and a presentation to graduating students. This poster will describe the process in more detail, discuss benefits and challenges, as well as highlight the considerations to keep in mind when developing and creating a digital collection of student work. Additionally, best practices and lessons learned will also be described to provide valuable information to others considering creating this type of collection at their own institution.
Results: At the end of the first semester of implementation, twenty student projects existed in our public collection. On the whole, both faculty and students were pleased to have a collection highlighting the work being done in their program. Valuable lessons were learned that can be applied in the next semester of implementation. Specifically, metadata consistency was an issue during the initial uploading process. Gaining select faculty and student buy-in by allaying concerns related to some student’s wanting to publish in a peer-reviewed journal on the topic of their final project remains vital.
Conclusion: Creating open access collections of student applied final projects or capstone projects allows for greater visibility of this type of often overlooked student scholarship. Specifically, the final projects showcased can now be found and accessed by potential employers, researchers, other schools, and other DNP students. In many cases these final projects have applied real-world impact related to answering clinical questions or patient care that should be shared with the world.
From Transforming Print: Collection Development and Management for Our Connected Future, edited by Lorrie McAllister and Shari Laster (Chicago: American Library Association, 2021).
Arizona State University (ASU) is known for both enormous size and scale, as well as excellence in research and innovation. These attributes are embodied in the ideal of the “New American University.” ASU Library, as a partner in the New American University, has reorganized itself, completed a large-scale renovation of its main library building, and created interdisciplinary divisions of librarians and other professionals, backed up by subject “knowledge teams” that address specific research needs of faculty and students. As a result, the library has become involved in nontraditional projects across the university. This article is useful for libraries seeking to remain relevant and align themselves with institutional priorities.