ANN ARBOR, Mich., November 12, 2004 - Intellectual history has long been a source of pride for academic institutions. Now, with Digital Commons@, the new digital institutional repository (IR) program from ProQuest Information and Learning, many institutions, large and small, can make their intellectual treasures more accessible. ProQuest Information and Learning, a unit of ProQuest Company, creates and publishes databases for libraries and educational institutions worldwide.

Among the pioneering uses by Digital Commons@ customers:

• Boston  College has launched Teaching Exceptional Children Plus, the first of several e-journals planned for presentation within eScholarship@BC, as its institutional repository is known.  The bi-monthly, e-only journal has a streamlined publication cycle that benefits from Digital Commons@’s unique peer review model.  For more details, see http://escholarship.bc.edu/education/tecplus/.
• Boston  College is also creating an innovative multimedia presence in its Digital Commons@ site with its Church in the 21^st Century Project.    Materials include both text and audio-visual files, including an archived webcast video.  To learn more, visit http://escholarship.bc.edu/church21/.
• The University of Pennsylvania has loaded more than 3,000 digitized dissertations into Scholarly Commons@Penn, its repository site launched in late summer.  This represents a huge volume of material to have available just after launching its repository. 
• Small colleges as well as the largest universities are embracing the idea of access to their intellectual history.  Dickinson College, Trinity College, Stevens Institute of Technology and Middlebury College have loaded undergraduate or honors papers. They’re finding that an institutional repository is a good recruiting tool, as well as a research asset.
• Several prestigious liberal arts institutions have banded together to create an “umbrella” repository under which materials from each of their unique Digital Commons@ materials are available. Visit http://digitalcommons.dickinson.edu/cdmt/ to explore this content.

“We see tremendous potential in Digital Commons as a way to maximize the visibility and availability of scholarship produced by the Boston College community. We've been using this pilot as a way to demonstrate the potential scope and value of the repository, to campus administrators, faculty, trustees, and others. Response to the concept has been very positive,” said Bob Gerrity, Head of Systems, O'Neill Library, Boston College.

Digital Commons@ was introduced at the American Library Association annual conference last June.  Powered by the vigorous Bepress platform (the technology partner driving the University of California's eScholarship Repository), it offers a highly desirable combination of functionality and price that is unmatched by any other IR product currently on the market.  Among its key features:

• Innovative peer-review management technology used by professional journal publishers
• All of an academic library’s dissertation content can be immediately uploaded
• Faculty outreach via automated emails, which encourage content submission
• Personalized saved searches and email notification of updates available in the repository
• Customizable controlled vocabulary pick-lists for keyword and subject area fields
• Usage reporting to the item level

“Subscribers are excited that they can set up a fully functional, feature-rich Institutional Repository in a matter of hours, for less investment than the do-it-yourself options,” said Austin McLean, director of scholarly communication and dissertations publishing for ProQuest.  A review of ProQuest’s IR program appears on the University of Pennsylvania web site: http://repository.upenn.edu/mission.html.

Libraries may receive more information by contacting their account representative at 1-800-521-0600, ext. 2793 (outside the U.S., call +44-1-223-215-512) or umisalesinfo@il.proquest.com.    Editors may call 1-800-521-0600, ext. 6489 or email pr@il.proquest.com.

About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery, and lifelong learning. A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as Chadwyck-Healey™, UMI®, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich's™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.

More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any age and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.

For more information, visit www.proquest.com or the ProQuest parent company website, www.cig.com.