Library adds Scholar Works to help students browse through SFA’s literary works

Last week, SFA unveiled a new website, Scholar Works, for faculty and students to browse through the collected scholarly works of those at SFA.

The website is a digital database of written work that faculty have had published throughout the years, including dissertations and theses from students.

Greg Bailey, the records manager and university archives librarian, is one of the main workers on this project.

“I think it’s really important for the University to do this,” Bailey said. “It’ll help with preserving the scholar work from the University, which is important for its reputation and prestige.”

The difference between Scholar Works and the regular library website is that Scholar Works strictly holds works published by faculty and students.

If a student wants to see their work put on the website, they must be sponsored by a professor or presented at the undergrad research conference.

Anyone can go to the website to check it out. But to get access to all of the information on the site the person must have a SFA ID and password.

“It’s an online archive of faculty publications,” Bailey said. “It’s preserving the University’s history, but it’s also trying to get that exposure for the faculty members as well.”

The website also goes through Google and Bing, so if a person entered in the article title or author, it should be near the top of the search results.

There’s a link to Scholar Works on the Library website under Quick Links, or students can also search for it online.

Other schools have sites similar to Scholar Works; according to Bailey it’s a way for colleges and universities to keep track of work published at their schools. 

The department is still working on putting faculty papers online. Professors can submit their work to the website by going to the Submit Work section of the website.

Scholar Works will serve as an institutional repository for SFA, meaning a digital organizational tool for the University to preserve materials.

Typically, when a professor publishes their work in a journal, they lose copyright to their material. Scholar Works will try working around the copyright to get access to the previously submitted material.