We are excited to announce that Texas ScholarWorks (TSW) has crossed the 100,000 item threshold! The 100,000th item to be added was the minutes from a meeting of Student Government on May 3rd, 1988. This item is part of a larger collection of over 3,000 documents related to UT Student Government. Gilbert Borrego, Digital Repository Specialist, has been managing this long-term project in cooperation with Student Government.
Texas ScholarWorks (formerly the University of Texas Digital Repository) was created to provide open, online access to the products of the University’s research and scholarship, preserve these works for future generations, promote new models of scholarly communication and deepen community understanding of the value of higher education. TSW went into production in September 2008, and the process of making content available online has been a team project from the start. The launch of TSW was the work of Project Institutional Repository Implementation (IRI) which started in early 2008. Over the course of approximately one year, the Project IRI team contributed 4,505 hours of work towards the launch and promotion of TSW. At the conclusion of the project in January 2009 there were 5,961 items in TSW.
The current TSW team includes our Digital Repository Specialist, Head of Scholarly Communications, a student worker, several catalogers, staff in digitization, librarians who refer faculty and students to us, and staff at Texas Digital Library who host TSW.
It’s really exciting to see the usage of resources shared in TSW. As of earlier this month, there have been over 39,000,000 total downloads of TSW materials. Top countries using TSW materials include:
- United States
- Germany
- India
- United Kingdom
- China
- Russia
- Canada
- France
Some of our most highly used items include:
- Piano quintet in Eb major, op. 44 by Robert Schumann: Transcribed for clarinet quartet and piano – a 2003 music dissertation
- First principles-based atomistic modeling of the structure and nature of amorphous Au-Si alloys and their application to Si nanowires synthesis – a 2008 chemical engineering dissertation
- Panamá, Resultados Elecciones 2009 – electoral data from a 2009 election in Panamá
- The Development and Psychometric Properties of LIWC2015 – a 2015 faculty paper about a text analysis program
- COVID and Corrections: A Profile of COVID Deaths in Custody in Texas – a 2020 report published by the LBJ School of Public Affairs
- The Causal Effect of Campus Residency on College Student Retention – a 2011 faculty paper
- Kangura – a Rwandan magazine archived in the Genocide Archive Rwanda collection
- Design and analysis of a 20 MW propulsion power train – 2004 publication from the Center for Electromechanics
We know how much amazing research and scholarship is happening at UT Austin, and being able to offer remote access to that content is really important. We’ve gotten so many comments from researchers around the world who have found relevant materials in TSW and are thankful for online access. We’ve also gotten rave reviews from faculty and staff on campus who have shared their research in TSW and seen immediate results.
- Thank you so very much. I have already downloaded the dissertation and love being able to read it here at home!
- You ROCK! Dr. [redacted] was thrilled to get access to [redacted] thesis. Many thanks to you and your team for keeping us in the hopper while traversing all things COVID. It was greatly appreciated.
- Thanks for your help in finding this paper. In these Covid times, lots of groups, including my local library, have discontinued research services.
- Thanks a lot. It really means a great deal to me.
- I am extremely grateful! Thank you for acting so quickly. You have brightened my day.
- We are so excited—I uploaded the report to TSW yesterday and it already has 25K views!
We are so thankful to everyone who has contributed to the success of TSW: the Project IRI team, current UT Libraries staff working on TSW, staff, faculty, and students at UT who upload their research, and our partners at Texas Digital Library for helping us reach this impressive milestone! Here’s to the next 100,000!
