What is DC@WOU? How is DC@WOU organized? What is the DC@WOU license?
Who can contribute items to DC@WOU? How do I browse DC@WOU? What is a Creative Commons license?
What materials are found in DC@WOU? How do I search DC@WOU?
What are the benefits of DC@WOU? How do I access statistics for DC@WOU?
Who can access items in DC@WOU? What file formats does DC@WOU accept?
DigitalCommons@WOU (DC@WOU) is Western Oregon University’s digital repository for research, scholarship and historical records.
Hamersly Library is responsible for collecting, maintaining, preserving and providing access to the items in DC@WOU.
Anyone belonging to the WOU community can contribute to DC@WOU.
Faculty and researchers should contact Sue Kunda (kundas@wou.edu; 503-838-8893 to contribute their research. More information for faculty can be found here.
Graduate students from various departments deposit their theses and professional projects into DC@WOU. More information can be found here. Submission instructions can be found here.
Undergraduate students from various departments and classes deposit their papers and projects to DC@WOU. Many Academic Excellence Showcase participants also deposit their work into DC@WOU. More information can be found here. Submission instructions can be found here.
Academic Excellence Showcase Presentations
Honors Theses
History Senior Research Papers
HST 301 WOU Oral History Projects
Materials found in DC@WOU include:
Faculty Research Outputs
Technical Reports
Working papers
Presentations
Graduate Theses, Research Papers and Professional Projects
Undergraduate Theses and Research Papers
University Historical Records
The benefits of adding your work to DC@WOU include:
1. Universal access. Everything in DC@WOU is freely available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. There are no toll-based subscription walls blocking access to your work.
2. More exposure. DC@WOU makes your work freely available to anyone who may be interested.
3. Easier information discovery. Your work is full-text searchable, making it discoverable through Google, Google Scholar, other large search engines and library search tools.
4. Persistent access. You’ll receive a persistent URL for your work that won’t break or disappear. You can paste this URL into any document, resume, vita or webpage.
5. Long-term preservation. Hamersly Library is committed to maintaining and preserving an item’s file(s) and associated metadata.
6. New computational research technologies. DC@WOU can take advantage of new computational research technologies to provide additional functionality, such as text mining and data linking.
7. Highlight research. DC@WOU provides a showcase for your department’s research and scholarship. You can use your community’s collections to attract scholars, researchers and funding.
8. Create a corpus of WOU research and scholarship. DC@WOU captures the intellectual capital of Western Oregon University in one place.
The vast majority of items in DC@WOU can be freely accessed by anyone in the world with an Internet connection. There’s no need to register or login to view or download items.
A small number of items – mostly embargoed research publications – are restricted to the WOU community, due to publisher permissions. If you’re interested in viewing a restricted item, please contact Sue Kunda (kundas@wou.edu; 503-838-8893), and we’ll attempt to put you in direct contact with the author.
DC@WOU is organized into Communities and Collections.
Communities are academic or campus units such as College of Education, Department of History and DeafBlind Interpreting National Training and Resource Center.
Collections are groups of digital objects that are similar to one another. Examples include:
There are three ways to browse DC@WOU. You can:
Browse all of DC@WOU@WOU
from any page
Browse a specific community (including its associated collections)
from within the community
Browse a specific collection
from within the collection
There are several ways to search DC@WOU; some will produce more relevant results than others.
Basic Search
The basic search box, found in the upper left of every page, allows you to search in DC@WOU or across all Digital Commons Repositories. You can also search within a collection if you navigate to that collection.
Enter your search terms in the textbox.
Choose from “this collection,” “this repository” or “across all repositories.”
Advanced Search
The “Advanced Search” box, found in the upper left of every page (underneath the “Search” text boxes), can be used to search on a variety of fields. You can search on one field or an unlimited number of fields.
After submitting appropriate terms to textboxes, you can filter your search by:
Entering beginning and ending dates
Choose from “this collection,” “this repository” or “across all repositories.”
Sort by “Relevance” or “Publication Date”
Choose the format: “links” or “Bibliography Export”.
DC@WOU can accept files of any format. Accepted items will be preserved in their original format.
These are the most common formats deposited to DC@WOU:
Authors who have work in DC@WOU receive a monthly report detailing download counts, readership statistics and more.
READERSHIP REPORT
If you’d like statistics for a specific community or collection, please contact Sue Kunda (kundas@wou.edu; 503-838-8893).
The non-exclusive DC@WOU Distribution License allows Hamersly Library to reproduce, translate and distribute your work worldwide in print and electronic format and in any current or future medium. The Distribution License in no way affects your copyright as the author of the work.
A Creative Commons License allows copyrighted works to be shared and re-used, within certain parameters, without contacting the author or creator of the copyrighted work. You may assign a Creative Commons License when depositing your work into DC@WOU or you may skip this step. See more information about Creative Commons Licenses here.
For questions regarding DC@WOU, please contact Sue Kunda (kundas@wou.edu; 503-838-8893).