Rollins Undergraduate Research Journal

You may have seen the link to the RURJ on the library's home page or elsewhere on campus. Here is a bit of background.

Fay Pappas, a remarkably energetic student at Rollins, didn't think that there was enough scholarly research going on at Rollins, at least amongst the students, and what there was didn'tget enough airtime. She thought about starting a research journal for students. She kept on talking about this idea with friends. Some said it would never take off, but others encouraged her. She got involved in Brushing, the long-standing student literary journal at Rollins, met Clay Ferrara, got him interested in the research journal idea, and became the Brushing Editor. Even this was not enough work for her and she still kept on thinking about the research journal. She met with President Duncan who found a little cash to help her get it going. She gathered a group of interested students and looked around for faculty sponsors. Ben Balak from Economics was interested and I offered to help with the journal side of things. Fay and Clay got excited about the idea of an online journal, tussled with the issues of copyright and with peer review, website design, and the submission process. They now have it up and running. It is really quite impressive.

I am proud that the library was able to help with the journal management issues, with copyright, and by archiving the articles. This is one of the things academic libraries should be doing these days. We should be a locus of expertise on systems of scholarly communication, intellectual property, and institutional repositories for digital objects.

The RURJ is a great example of student entrepreneurship, scholarship, and engagement at Rollins and one of the reasons I thoroughly enjoy working here.