Fairfield University: DigitalCommons@Fairfield

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Fairfield University Art Museum

Installation image of the exhibition Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut

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Installation image of the exhibition An Gorta Mor: Selections from Ireland\u27s Great Hunger Museum

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DigitalCommons@Fairfield 
Institutional Repository (IR) - Guidelines 
This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands.  Additional guidelines will be drafted, as 
needed, over the coming months.   
Statement of Responsibility  
The IR Advisory Board is responsible for guiding the direction of the repository 
(DigitalCommons@Fairfield) which will include, but is not limited to: content, policies, implementation, 
strategies, and the assessment & review process of the IR.  Significant new projects need to be approved 
by the Advisory Board, especially those that will require additional staff time, storage space, emerging 
formats, or digitization.   
The librarian liaisons are responsible for communicating the purpose of DigitalCommons@Fairfield to 
the Fairfield University community and recruiting material for inclusion.  Librarian liaisons are also 
responsible for educating our users about the requirements of copyright law, making it clear that 
submissions must comply with current copyright guidelines.  
Faculty may recommend material for inclusion to their representative librarian liaison.  University 
employees and students should direct their requests to submit materials to the appropriate department 
head or faculty member who, in turn, will make the recommendation to their librarian liaison or to the 
IR email account at digitalcommons@fairfield.edu . 
At the time of the repository launch, library personnel will assume the responsibility of rights-checking, 
seeking permissions, submitting and posting materials to the IR.  In the future, a self-submission service 
will be made available, enabling faculty and staff to directly submit materials to the IR.   
All correspondence regarding the repository should be sent to either the appropriate library liaison OR 
the IR email account at digitalcommons@fairfield.edu.   
Content Organization 
(See Figure 1 below for visual representation) 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield is organized into communities.  A community can be a School within the 
University or a research center, a program, or any other unit within Fairfield University.  
Communities may be (but are not required to be) divided into sub-communities.  These sub-
communities serve to further categorize the content.  For example within a community (i.e., College of 
Arts and Sciences) there may be several sub-communities (i.e., Biology dept., English dept., etc.).      
Communities and sub-communities will contain collection series into which content files are placed.  
These collection series may include, but are not limited to: 
• faculty publications 
• faculty presentations or  lectures 
• conference proceedings 
• Student publications 
• Student honors papers, theses and dissertations 
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• Department-sponsored journals, newsletters, or other projects. 
 Each item within a collection series is provided an individual, permanent URL. 
Figure 1 
Content Guidelines  
Who may contribute content? 
Upon initial launch of DigitalCommons@Fairfield, priority is being given to faculty publications.  
However, individuals affiliated with any Fairfield University school, department, center, program, or 
other campus unit can contribute content in the near future. Other groups that do not fall under this 
definition will be considered by the Advisory Board on a case-by-case basis. 
What materials can be contributed? 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield plans to achieve very broad collection development goals for our digital 
collections.  However as noted above, upon initial launch, content and contributors will be prioritized.  
Appropriate content may be added following the guidelines below:  
• The work must be original, produced and submitted, or sponsored by a faculty, student, staff, 
department, program or center of Fairfield University.   
• The work must be creative, scholarly in nature, research oriented, or of institutional significance.  
• The author must own the copyright to all components and content within the work, or have 
received and shown permission to have the material available on DigitalCommons@Fairfield.   
Upon initial launch, library personnel will check for publisher copyright policies on behalf of 
faculty. 
o If your work contains images, music, data sets, or other accompanying material that is 
not original work created by you, you must include permission from the original content 
provider or those items will not be included in the IR submission. 
COMMUNITY (ex: College of Arts & 
Sciences)
SUB-COMMUNITY (ex:  Biology Dept.)
COLLECTION 
SERIES (ex:  
Faculty 
Publications)
COLLECTION 
SERIES (ex:  
Faculty 
Presentations)
COLLECTION 
SERIES (ex.: 
Student 
Publications)
SUB-COMMUNITY (ex: English Dept.)
COLLECTION 
SERIES (ex:  
Faculty 
Publications)
COLLECTION 
SERIES (ex: 
Faculty 
Presenations)
COLLECTION 
SERIES (ex: 
Student 
Publications)
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o If your work includes interviews, you must include a statement that you have permission 
from the interviewee(s) to make their interviews public. 
• Once self-submission is available, the content producer must sign a permission form prior to 
material being uploaded to the repository, granting the University the right to distribute and 
preserve the material via DigitalCommons@Fairfield.  
• Contributors may include non-affiliated scholars if they are co-authoring with Fairfield University 
authors or are affiliated closely with the University, e.g., are emeritus professors, or hold 
honorary appointments. 
• Because deposits are intended to be permanent contributions to the repository, works that are 
in progress or ephemeral in nature will not be accepted. 
• Some material may be available only to current faculty, staff and students. 
• At present, there is no formal limit to size of material. 
• Most file formats are acceptable. 
• Textual files are automatically converted to PDF format during the upload process.  
• For audio, image and video files, please contact the librarian liaison or 
digitalcommons@fairield.edu for guidance.  
Who owns copyright of the deposited content? 
Fairfield University does not seek nor claim copyright ownership of a work submitted to the IR but does 
retain the right to provide long term access.   PLEASE NOTE:  The recommendations in this section are 
offered as guidelines and should not be relied upon for legal advice. 
 
In the case of previously PUBLISHED items, the copyright for items submitted to the IR may either be 
owned by the content producer OR by the publisher to whom those rights have been transferred.   Upon 
initial launch of the IR, library personnel will check publisher copyright policies 
(http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo) and seek written publisher permissions when necessary.    
 
For previously UNPUBLISHED items, the content producer retains all proprietary rights, including 
copyright ownership.    The content producer may choose what rights they would like to place on their 
individual items.  The IR Advisory Board recommends selecting a Creative Commons license that meets 
your preferences (creativecommons.org/licenses/).   The license is a statement as to what others may 
do with your work, so you should select a license that matches what you’re comfortable allowing others 
to do with your work. 
 
If you are submitting an article for publication to a traditional publisher in the future, you may want to 
consider retaining your rights to your article, including the right to deposit your work in an open access 
repository such as DigitalCommons@Fairfield, by attaching an AUTHOR’S COPYRIGHT ADDENDUM 
(http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml).  
 
May content be removed? 
DigitalCommons@Fairfield was established to provide long-term, persistent access to deposited items. 
However, a situation may arise requiring the removal of an item. When this becomes necessary, contact 
your librarian liaison or send an email to digitalcommons@fairfield.edu and together we will determine 
the best course of action. 
 
Since any item within DigitalCommons@Fairfield may have been cited via its persistent URL, a 
“tombstone” page will remain for any removed items.  The tombstone will contain metadata for the 
item with a message indicating the item was removed. The tombstone metadata will be visible to those 
who already have its persistent URL, but your deposit and its metadata will no longer be searchable and 
the items will no longer be available for harvesting by services such as Google and OAIster. 
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If an author leaves the University, his/her material will remain in the IR. 
 
What are the RIGHTS and TERMS OF USE for Users of the IR? 
All users must respect the intellectual property rights and copyright of the content producer/author. 
All Creative Commons Licenses established by the original author must be followed. 
Material may be downloaded for educational research purposes provided due recognition is given to the 
author. 
Materials without a Creative Commons license may not be copied, distributed, altered, or used for 
commercial purposes unless express written permission is obtained from the content producer. 
 
 


English

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