LASR, Liberal, Arts Scholarly Repository, is a developing community of liberal arts institutions that share a common vision for providing access to their locally created scholarly works. This vision includes the portal here that aggregates the collections, a shared repository to which member schools can contribute content, and the people who are actively developing LASR.

Portal:  this portal (currently at http://lasr.longsight.com) provides the interface for discoveries and gaining access to the scholarly and creative content that has been identified by the member institutions for LASR. Visitors may search or browse across the content from the entire collection by using the tools available from the main page of the site.  This includes keyword search, advanced or guided search, and tag cloud.  Additionally, visitors can focus on the content by selecting a school from the main page and then proceeding to use the search and tag cloud features.

Shared Repository:  although the portal is built to provide an aggregation of collections hosted by the individual institutions, many members also share a repository.  This repository currently uses the DSpace platform and is hosted at http://dspace.lasrworks.org).

People:  the representation from member schools is recognized as the most important aspect of LASR.  A steering committee includes the lead personnel from each school.  This committee is tasked with the strategic development of the consortium.  Additionally, there are ad hoc committees, including one for technology (tasked with the technical implementation of LASR initiatives and technical support for member schools) and a metadata committee (tasked with the development of unified metadata schemes for LASR).

Mission Statement for LASR:

Scholarship is a conversation that depends on the work of others.  Vital to this exchange of ideas is the accessibility of research, criticism, and other scholarly and creative work to the larger community of scholars.  The Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository is an openly accessible archive that documents the scholarly and other creative activity of the students, faculty, and staff of the participating institutions. It provides individual scholars at those institutions (and beyond) the opportunity to share, explore, discover, and evolve the ideas, experience, enquiry fundamental to liberal education.

LASR especially intends to showcase significant student work – such as senior theses and collaborative projects – that demonstrates the accomplishment of students at selective liberal arts colleges and universities and makes it available for world wide discovery and access.

The institutions participating in LASR comprise a community of practice exploring the benefits of cross-institutional collaboration in capturing, preserving and providing perpetual access to liberal arts scholarship through a shared repository.  We promote awareness of and advocacy for the rights of creators and users of intellectual property, and the expertise gained by participating institutions is used locally and shared widely.