The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is now home to more than half a million files! We don’t know exactly which newly uploaded file was the 500,000th to be added to the system, but it was likely a digitized image from the Mills College Art Museum — possibly one of the etchings by Stefano della Bella, Jan Georg van Vliet, or Theodorus van Kessel.
This milestone comes as the library celebrates a decade of supporting the DRS as a service for the university community. In those 10 years, a few files have emerged as the most popular, seeing consistent traffic year after year, including:
- The effect of athletic participation on the academic achievement of high school students — This thesis by Robert F. McCarthy, a former student in the College of Professional Studies Education program, is the most downloaded file in the DRS, with 80,978 downloads since 2015, averaging more than 8,000 downloads a year.
- Internet Meme: “Ancient Aliens” meme — The most viewed file in the DRS is a variation of the Ancient Aliens meme from the Our Marathon collection, which contains crowdsourced images, documents, and audio-visual content related to the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon. The file has been viewed 51,598 times since 2018, averaging more than 7,000 views a year.
- Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS): Full Test — The most streamed audio or video file in the DRS is a test instrument that is widely used in the field of psychology. The full test video has been streamed 21,979 since 2015, averaging more than 2,000 streams a year.
Learn more about the DRS and its collections in our series celebrating its 10th anniversary.