Evergrowing collections of student works in the SDR

Before the start of a new academic year, it’s fun to review all the undergraduate honors theses, capstone projects, portfolios, masters theses and other culminating works submitted by students to the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) over the prior year. In 2018 fifteen new collections were created and populated for distinct programs of study; another 16 existing collections grew in size with additional content. In total 269 titles were deposited across 31 active collections, making for an overall total of 55 student collections containing 1,689 individual works in the SDR. 

 

This flow of content has been steadily growing since we first launched the SDR Online Deposit application five years ago. Departments and students across Stanford recognize that archiving and sharing these works is a remarkably easy and effective way to promote the excellent -- award-winning! -- scholarship that is produced here at Stanford every year. 

Stanford Libraries' subject specialists are increasingly conducting outreach to promote SDR archiving and publishing services for the benefit of students and departments with whom they work closely.

In spring 2018, I collaborated with Kris Kasianovitz, Regina Roberts, Stella Ota, Ben Albritton and Arcadia Falcone to develop two workshops and a set of supporting materials designed specifically for Libraries' selectors so that they can boot-strap this process for Stanford departments. The training and documentation were clearly helpful: the quality of metadata provided by the students was higher and fewer corrections were required during processing. 

Here are a few selected highlights from this year’s crop of student deposits:  

• Episodic degassing from unsteady lava lake convection in Ray Lava Lake, Mount Erebus, Antarctica, by Janine Birnbaum, Department of Geophysics
• Lady Hero: Teaching Models of Empowerment in Young Adult Fantasy Literature, by Andrea Lim
• Analyzing Autonomous Car Crashes in California, by Michael McLaughlin, Department of Communication and Journalism
• Developing Sense of Place in USA Zoos: Effect of Featuring Local Versus Exotic Species, by Mireille Bejjani, Department of Biology (Winner of the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research)
• Ν=4 Compactifications of String Theory and Supergravity, by Ethan Sussman, Department of Physics (Winner of the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research)
• Human Rights and History Podcast Series, Episode 1 Cambodia by Alina Utrata and Christina Schiciano, WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Minor in Human Rights
• Unpopular Choices: A Cautionary Tale for the Future of Venezuela by Ryan Kertis, Center for Latin American Studies
• Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from U.S. Highways, by Laura Zhang, Department of Economics (Winner of the David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prize)
• Hydroxychloroquine use and adverse events in Lupus pregnancy: A Stanford Experience, by Nada Rizk, Program in Epidemiology & Clinical Research
• Secondary prevention of severe pneumonia in neurologically impaired children: a comparative effectiveness study, by Jody Lo Lin, Program in Health Policy
   

These collections are available for discovery in SearchWorks.  You can find them amongst the larger pool of Dissertations & Theses holdings.