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University Libraries

eCommons crosses 100,000-Download Milestone

In celebration of the 100,000th full-text download from UD’s institutional repository, eCommons, on May 21, the University Libraries presented 100 Grand candy bars to all faculty members who had papers downloaded that day.

Honored faculty members included:

Vorachek, whose papers on Victorian literature and culture debuted on eCommons in December 2014, said she was immediately and pleasantly surprised at the visibility her work receives. The first month, she had 23 downloads; the next month, the number doubled; a month later, it increased more than 50 percent again to 78, where it’s hovered ever since.

“I have enjoyed knowing that people are actually reading my work — or at least downloading it with the intent to read it,” she said.

Her most popular download — a chapter in a 2005 book published in Dunedin, New Zealand — most often attracts readers who are searching in Google for relationships between Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women. Now out of print and primarily relegated to bookshelves in a handful of academic libraries, the essay has, with the express permission of the publisher, experienced a second life.

Since the launch of eCommons in October 2013, the repository has grown to almost 13,000 papers, with 71,000 of the 100,000 total downloads coming in the past 12 months. And in May, UD was among the most popular institutions in the Digital Commons network in the following subject areas:

  • Physical sciences and mathematics
  • Arts and humanities
  • Social and behavioral sciences
  • Educational administration and supervision

If you’d like to find out more about how uploading your papers to eCommons can make your scholarship more discoverable, contact Maureen Schlangen.

 - Maureen Schlangen, E-scholarship and communications manager

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