Washington State University Libraries

Systems Office

Libraries Systems Projects


Below is information on some of the projects currently being supported by Library Systems:


Research Exchange-related services

Staff in Library Systems provide support for a number of scholarly communication-related services. WSU Research Exchange is a durable digital repository that enables faculty, students, and campus departments to deposit their digital content through a web interface; the Libraries takes on the role of enabling access to and preserving the content. Items in Research Exchange have stable, long-term identifiers (called file handles) which remain constant over time; this makes the identifiers ideal for inclusion in vitas and research papers. Additionally, the content stored in Research Exchange is automatically harvested by search engines like Google and can be easily shared with discipline-specific repositories.

The Libraries also supports hosting of electronic journals. The WSU literary arts journal LandEscapes is the first journal hosted through this service.

Discovery and fulfillment system modernization

The WSU WorldCat service provides access to books, articles, and digital content. Since its launch in August 2009, several enhancements have been integrated to WSU WorldCat, including the inclusion of third-party databases (such as Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, PsycArticles and ACM Digital Library) in the default search. Additionally, links to freely-available full-text content are now included on the results screens. For more information about WSU WorldCat, including a listing and description of databases included in searching, see this wiki site.

J. Elroy McCaw Memorial Film Collection: Pilot Digitization Project

This pilot project is designed to gather an understanding of the process of preserving and digitizing 16mm film collections. The pilot project involved 5% of the reels of the J. Elroy McCaw Memorial Film Collection that was donated to the WSUL in 1982. Using funds from the Bruce and Jolene Donor Advised funds the WSUL was able to clean and digitize twenty three RKO feature films and five military documentaries. Lessons learned from this project will be applied toward the preservation and digitization of the entire collection which includes 436 feature films and twenty five military documentaries. The RKO feature films included in the pilot project have been transferred to DVD and can be checked out from the Media, Materials and Reserves desk. You can find the preserved and digitized items by searching in Griffin. The military documentaries can be viewed from URL http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fmccaw