Library Posts 1,000 Faculty Publication

From the Ashland University Newsroom & Public Relations:

ASHLAND, Ohio –The Ashland University Library recently reached a milestone with the 1,000th faculty publication added to its online faculty publications database.

Launched in the spring of 2005, the online database is searchable by faculty author, year, type of publication, department, college and keywords.

Library Director Bill Weiss said the works included in the online database date back to 1990. A list of faculty publications prior to 1990 is kept in a printed list available on the Faculty Publications shelf and in the Special Books Room.

“This is a work in progress,” Weiss said. “It’s a way for the University to showcase the scholarly accomplishments of its faculty.”

New entries are added as they are identified through faculty submissions, CVs or information printed in AU’s faculty/staff newsletter.

The 1,000th entry was a journal article by Dr. Mitchell Metzger, chair and associate professor of psychology, titled “The Forgetting of Stimulus Attributes in Latent Inhibition” that appeared in Physiology and Behavior.

“The database only contains books, book chapters and periodical publications,” Weiss said. “It does not include conference papers, which would also be considered publications, or book reviews.”

Weiss noted the online faculty publications database is a joint project of the AU Library and Information Technology. Former IT staff member Shelly Shaver designed the web page and wrote the code allowing for the searchable database.

Should a faculty member leave the University, their publications will remain part of the database, but no publications are added after they leave AU. New faculty members’ publications are now entered into the database when they join the University and new faculty are encouraged to notify the library of their publications. The full-text of articles in journals for which the library has an online subscription is also available to authorized users.

When new entries are added to the database, a congratulatory note is emailed to the author with a copy sent to the dean of the faculty member’s college. Provost Dr. Frank Pettigrew is also apprised of the listings on a semi-annual basis.

“To reach the 1,000 mark in faculty publications is an indication to me of how productive our faculty members are outside the classroom in terms of conducting research in their respective field,” Pettigrew said. “This list does not include all the publications or scholarly activity, but I’m sure that if you check the list many of the publications have occurred in the last 12 years.

“We’ve been conducting national searches for all of our faculty openings and this has raised the quality of our faculty. We’ve also put in place a load reduction to allow faculty time to conduct research and publish. We presently have 232 faculty members and to achieve 1,000 publications, with most of them in the last few years, is significant. That shows the quality of the faculty we have at Ashland and puts us right there with any institution in the country.” -- AU Newsroom, 4/3/09

Ashland University Publications is part of the AU Library web site. For more information, or to submit your publication for inclusion, contact Kathryn Venditti, faculty librarian, at kvenditt@ashland.edu.