Hilde Colenbrander has managed cIRcle since its inception.
Want to find a UBC thesis on the biological feasibility of Pacific oyster and California sea cucumber polyculture, but not sure where to start? How about guidelines on mine haul road design from the School of Engineering at the Okanagan campus?
Have no fear — cIRcle, UBC’s digital repository, is here to help users near and far access a treasure trove of research. As cIRcle Coordinator Hilde Colenbrander notes, “We’re aiming to be a digital archive of the University’s intellectual output.”
cIRcle is based on an open access model, which allows anyone with a Web browser to access more than 40,000 works from UBC faculty and students for viewing, research and other scholarly pursuits.
Since its beginnings five years ago, cIRcle has made tremendous strides. Today, it ranks 15th among top U.S. and Canadian repositories, and 36th among 1,435 repositories worldwide.
Rankings aside, what makes cIRcle so valuable is its depth and breadth. As an example, Colenbrander highlights the UBC Retrospective Theses and Dissertation Collection, where users can explore documents dating from 1919 to 2007.
The repository also made a big impression at a recent Vancouver mining conference by making valuable content freely available online — for the first time — for attendees and users around the world. More than 70 conference papers were featured in cIRcle ahead of the conference. At the time, the most popular paper was viewed hundreds of times from users in countries including Canada, the US, Brazil, Peru, the UK, Iran, Chile, Australia, Japan and Mexico.
Colenbrander and her staff will continue to grow cIRcle as a core Library and campus-wide service. In the coming year, the focus will include developing a digital preservation strategy and working with campus partners to capture more of the University’s research output.
For more information, please visit circle.ubc.ca
This story first appeared in UBC Library’s Community Report (2012).