Iowa Research Online has just passed the 100,000 mark!

The repository launched in January 2009. Since that time, we have added 3,630 items to the collection which have now been used over 100,000 times. We are very pleased that our local scholarship has been receiving so much use.

Our highest use collection is our electronic thesis and dissertation collection, which shows the importance of our recent graduates’ scholarship.  This collection has a wide range of content across all disciplines.  The theses receiving the most use are:

• The Boston “T” Party: Masculinity, Testosterone Therapy, And Embodiment Among Aging Men And Transgender Men by Alexis Ruth Matza, who received her PhD in Anthropology in 2009,
• Cortical Bone Thickness In The Maxilla And Mandible For Mini-Implant Placement by Shawneen Gonzalez, who received a Master of Science in Stomatology in 2008.

Our peer-reviewed journals also receive high use. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and Medieval Feminist Forum were both print only and now the back content is freely available and the current issue is available to subscribers. Poroi and Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography moved into Iowa Research Online to provide an improved interface. Some of the articles receiving the most use are:

• The Whitman Recording by Ed Folsom
• Murdering the Narrator of the Wife’s Lament by Berit Ǻström
• Foucault’s Rhetorical Theory and U.S. Intelligence Affairs by Hamilton Bean
• Female Circumcision and Infibulation in Africa by David M. Westley

Our collections of faculty scholarship are also receiving high use.  Highlights from these collections include:

• Image, Text, and Story: Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams in the Teaching and Learning Department.
• Rethinking the mood and anxiety disorders: a quantitative hierarchical model for DSM-V by David Watson in the Psychology Department.
• Comparative Democracy: the Economic Development Thesis, co-authored by Michael Lewis-Beck in the Political Science Department.
• Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy: An Analytic Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources by Marshall Poe in the History Department.

Our partnership with the University of Iowa Press to make the back volumes of selected series available has also contributed several popular items:

• The Black Velvet Girl by C. E. Poverman, winner of the 1976 Iowa Short Fiction Award.
• Memoirs of a Cold War Son by Gaines Post, Jr, in the Singular Lives series.

Several reports from the Public Policy Center have also been receiving a lot of use, including:

• First Evaluation of the IowaCare Program
• Iowa Medicaid Non-Emergency Medical Transportation System Review and Options for Improvements 

We have found that IRO is used by people all over the world.  While most use comes from the United States, substantial use also comes from people in the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Germany, Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and China, demonstrating the international nature of our collection and of research.

Thanks to everyone who has helped make the collection such a success!