Rensselaer Digital Collections consist of materials of intellectual, historic and cultural value to Rensselaer in a wide variety of image, audio, video and text formats. The Digital Collections are administered by the Rensselaer Libraries, utilizing DigiTool*, a content management application, and DSpace@RPI, a repository of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's theses and dissertations which are available in digital format, largely from 2006 to present, along with other selected resources.
*Access to DigiTool is currently limited to current members of the RPI community, including students, staff, and faculty. It can be accessed on campus, or off-campus using Cisco AnyConnect VPN. Please direct any questions to Digital Collections Support.
The Rensselaer Digital Collections include:
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's theses and dissertations, largely from 2006 to present
- Selected publications and photographs from the Institute Archives and Special Collections
- School of Architecture publications, image collections, and Bachelor of Architecture fifth year projects from 2007-2015
- Darrin Fresh Water Institute papers and reports
- The Polytechnic from the 1800s through 2001
- Rensselaer Alumni Magazine
Key DSpace@RPI features include:
- Easy content discovery through browse/search
- Full text indexing and search
- A responsive user interface
- Single sign-on (Shibboleth) for access to items restricted to the Rensselaer community
- Automatically minted handle.net persistent identifiers
- Support for Open Access content
- Platform integrations with other Rensselaer Libraries systems
- Indexing by all major commercial search engines, including Google Scholar
Access and Permissions
Rensselaer students, faculty, and staff have free, unlimited access to the Rensselaer Digital Collections. Many items are also available to unaffiliated researchers, but access to some items is restricted by copyright or licensing agreements. Inquiries about collections or specific items should be made to Digital Collections Support.
Alumni have access to the Digital Collections (with the exception of DigiTool until further notice), including copyright restricted material. Alums can login using their Rensselaer Alumni Association (RAA) username and password.