Royal Roads and Vancouver Island universities have reached an agreement to increase public access to student and faculty research.
The three-year pilot project will include a collaboration between library staff at the two institutions in order to share an online research repository.
“It’s an interesting opportunity for us to go into a shared arrangement with another institution and particularly another institution that is aligned in terms of its research mandates,” said Royal Roads University librarian Rosie Croft.
“It will help the public access our research and get a better sense of what’s going on Island-wide.”
Croft also said the initiative will give the university’s students and faculty more exposure for their academic work.
Other collaborations between post-secondary institutions could be possible in the future, Croft added.
“Doing it together between (the two Island universities) seems like a good start, but we’ll see whether or not it grows into something bigger than it is,” she said.
“It’s a good experiment for us … it gives us some flexibility to see what works out and what doesn’t work out, but I’m sure it will be quite an impactful effort overall.”
Members of the public will be able to search the two institutions’ research projects together or separately using simple search terms. The research repository will also align with granting agencies’ desire to share student and faculty research results.
The repository will launch this fall and be accessible to the public through the universities’ library websites.
joel.tansey@goldstreamgazette.com