SHU Celebrates Two Million Digital Common Downloads

Nearly 8,000 items have been uploaded since 2010

Sacred Heart University’s Digital Commons repository received its two millionth download on December 28, 2021. The site, which houses academic articles by SHU’s faculty, initially went public in 2010.

Digital Commons’ one millionth download took place on November 28, 2018, taking less than half that time to accumulate the second million. “This not only reflects the publications of our faculty, and the institutional publications of our University, but the excellent work of Beverly Lysobey, Deana Santoro-Dillon and all the student library assistants who have scanned, uploaded, transferred and otherwise made available nearly 8,000 items in the past 10 years,” said Peter Gavin Ferriby, University librarian.

Digital Commons was not initially embraced by the faculty, Ferriby said. In 2010 he heard, “We’re a small teaching university and we don’t have that much to upload. Is it worth it for a few hundred articles?” he remembers people asking. “This goes to show, we’re not just a small teaching university anymore,” he said. “We passed those few hundred articles a long time ago.”