Sherrod Library News

Celebrating Ashley Sergiadis, Digital Commons IR All-Star & Bobblehead Recipient

Ashley Sergiadis, Associate Professor and Digital Scholarship Librarian, has been selected as a 2023 Digital Commons Institutional Repository (IR) All-Star for her track record of vibrant IR collection growth, her innovative and tireless approach to engage faculty and others on campus to support their scholarly communications needs, and a demonstrated eagerness to share and teach others.

At East Tennessee State University, Ashley Sergiadis has overseen the institutional repository (Digital Commons@ETSU) as well as other scholarly communication initiatives such as textbook affordability programs since 2017. Digital Commons@ETSU collections have flourished under Sergiadis’ leadership, with an increase of events, journals, university archives, Open Educational Resources, and faculty and student scholarship. Most recently, she is leading the implementation of an expert finder featuring all full-time faculty. She not only facilitates the transfer of materials to Digital Commons@ETSU but is often an active participant in the organization of the collections and creation of the materials. Some examples include participating in faculty-led grant teams to create Open Educational Resources and serving on the Appalachian Student Research Forum Faculty Advisory Council, which have led to populating Digital Commons@ETSU with rich materials. She consistently shares her knowledge, publishing and presenting on scholarly communication topics such as altmetrics in IRs, third-party tools (Zotero, SHERPA/RoMEO, and Unpaywall) in IR workflows, and textbook affordability initiatives such as an Open Educational Resources awards program and a library e-textbooks program.

Prior to her work at ETSU, Sergiadis managed Georgia Southern University’s institutional repository Digital Commons@Georgia Southern for over three years. She grew their IR to include 22 conferences, 8 journals, 14,000 records, and 400 faculty profiles. During her time at Georgia Southern, she presented on numerous topics related to IRs including managing conferences, reusing metadata to highlight faculty scholarship, and applying DOIs in an institutional repository.