Libraries Hours for Fall Break

Hours are reduced October 9-11, and all Smith Libraries are closed Monday, October 12. Alumnae Gymnasium is open 24 hours for swipe access. For details, see Hours.

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Celebrate Open Access Week with the Libraries!

Events

Open Access Week 2026: The Cost of Knowledge

Published October 20, 2025

October 19-25, 2026

Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

Open Access to information—the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need—has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

The Cost of Knowledge is the theme for this year’s International Open Access Week (October 19-25). We create and share knowledge in order to advance human understanding and the common good. We recognize that accessing and sharing knowledge is a human right. Yet, the costs to access and share knowledge continue to increase, often dramatically. Why? Who benefits?

This week, and every week, the Libraries celebrate and welcome Open Access at Smith College through a number of ways:

Smith ScholarWorks

ScholarWorks download map

Smith ScholarWorks is an institutional repository that provides permanent online access to advanced scholarship. The collection encourages the growth of scholarly communities through open access, quick discovery, and wide dissemination of scholarly and creative content by Smith College faculty, students, and staff. Content may include: faculty, student, and staff scholarship; online journals, newsletters, and podcasts; presentations and posters; student theses and dissertations; and more. 

Jessica Ryan, Scholarly Communications Librarian

 

To date, more than 4 million items have been downloaded from ScholarWorks worldwide. Each month, Scholarly Communications Librarian Jessican Ryan writes “What am I Reading in ScholarWorks?” as a way to shed light on one particular resource available for download in the repository. 

Read the latest “What am I Reading in ScholarWorks?”

 

 

Scholarly Communications & Open Access

Visit our Scholarly Communication research guide to learn more about open access and how Smith supports open access scholarship beyond ScholarWorks.

Contact

Jessica Ryan, Scholarly Communications Librarian: jryan@smith.edu