100 Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
Libraries have the unique and historic privilege of being the holders of university scholarly collections.
Indeed, for years libraries have been acquiring books, journals, maps, and other objects to support
scholarship. The ability to interrogate these holdings using digital methods has the potential to lead
to new interdisciplinary understanding and potentially deeper discoveries within current bodies of
knowledge. Libraries and librarians will need new tools and skills to realize this potential, including
data management, multi-media digitization, curation, and deeper understanding of non-traditional
literacies. Along with the tools and skills, libraries will need to increase inter-library collaborations that
allow for scholars from various disciplines and schools to work on projects together. Libraries’ holdings
special collections will be veritable treasure troves of information waiting to be accessed from beyond
their own institutions walls.
Libraries will continue to be a site of centralized and interdisciplinary expertise and resources to
support digital scholarship. Physical space will continue to be an important component of the library’s
value in supporting digital scholarship, and special-use spaces will continue to be developed. Libraries
will play a growing role in teaching and instructional support around digital scholarship and digital
methods (i.e., less of an exclusive focus on digital scholarship support for research and publishing
activity). As both the practice and capabilities for digital scholarship grow within libraries’ parent
institutions, the library will have to continually re-evaluate how it partners with other DS entities (e.g.,
departmental DS units, regional centers, emerging curricular and degree programs), as well as consider
how to design services that scale in a sustainable way. Hiring, training, and developing staff to support
digital scholarship will continue to be a challenge.
Libraries will continue to engage with digital scholarship in all disciplines. Libraries provide neutral
ground for researchers. They have a long tradition of housing and preserving information (data).
Libraries understand the significance of metadata. They will continue to hire the staff needed to
support these efforts and remain a vital resource for the entire university. This is the primary area
for growth, without it the academic research library is likely to wither down to a collection of print
repositories and e-resource managers.
Libraries will focus on scholarly communication and/or publishing.
Lots of outreach and instruction, since bespoke projects are unsustainable in the long run service-
development rather than project completion infrastructure building.
More and more.
More strongly thinking about data/digital collections as part of library collections, more importance
put on data literacy across the disciplines, digital preservation will be a central library activity.
Much larger, though we have to figure out issues of scale.
Once we have a more robust infrastructure and staffing model in place to support DS activities, we hope
to play a very active role in DS efforts on campus. We would ultimately want to be viewed as the “go-to”
source of DS support on campus.
One of the major issues we’ve encountered is that digital scholarship has not been widely accepted as
part of the faculty tenure process, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The library will play
an important role in educating faculty on the importance of digital scholarship, specifically how it can
have an increasing presence in junior faculty dossiers.
Our copyright consultation services have grown dramatically, which is a service still only found at a
handful of organizations. We expect to see this adopted at more libraries going forward. We also expect
publishing efforts to continue to grow significantly, and expand, i.e., from faculty to graduate students,
undergraduates, and local communities.
Libraries have the unique and historic privilege of being the holders of university scholarly collections.
Indeed, for years libraries have been acquiring books, journals, maps, and other objects to support
scholarship. The ability to interrogate these holdings using digital methods has the potential to lead
to new interdisciplinary understanding and potentially deeper discoveries within current bodies of
knowledge. Libraries and librarians will need new tools and skills to realize this potential, including
data management, multi-media digitization, curation, and deeper understanding of non-traditional
literacies. Along with the tools and skills, libraries will need to increase inter-library collaborations that
allow for scholars from various disciplines and schools to work on projects together. Libraries’ holdings
special collections will be veritable treasure troves of information waiting to be accessed from beyond
their own institutions walls.
Libraries will continue to be a site of centralized and interdisciplinary expertise and resources to
support digital scholarship. Physical space will continue to be an important component of the library’s
value in supporting digital scholarship, and special-use spaces will continue to be developed. Libraries
will play a growing role in teaching and instructional support around digital scholarship and digital
methods (i.e., less of an exclusive focus on digital scholarship support for research and publishing
activity). As both the practice and capabilities for digital scholarship grow within libraries’ parent
institutions, the library will have to continually re-evaluate how it partners with other DS entities (e.g.,
departmental DS units, regional centers, emerging curricular and degree programs), as well as consider
how to design services that scale in a sustainable way. Hiring, training, and developing staff to support
digital scholarship will continue to be a challenge.
Libraries will continue to engage with digital scholarship in all disciplines. Libraries provide neutral
ground for researchers. They have a long tradition of housing and preserving information (data).
Libraries understand the significance of metadata. They will continue to hire the staff needed to
support these efforts and remain a vital resource for the entire university. This is the primary area
for growth, without it the academic research library is likely to wither down to a collection of print
repositories and e-resource managers.
Libraries will focus on scholarly communication and/or publishing.
Lots of outreach and instruction, since bespoke projects are unsustainable in the long run service-
development rather than project completion infrastructure building.
More and more.
More strongly thinking about data/digital collections as part of library collections, more importance
put on data literacy across the disciplines, digital preservation will be a central library activity.
Much larger, though we have to figure out issues of scale.
Once we have a more robust infrastructure and staffing model in place to support DS activities, we hope
to play a very active role in DS efforts on campus. We would ultimately want to be viewed as the “go-to”
source of DS support on campus.
One of the major issues we’ve encountered is that digital scholarship has not been widely accepted as
part of the faculty tenure process, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The library will play
an important role in educating faculty on the importance of digital scholarship, specifically how it can
have an increasing presence in junior faculty dossiers.
Our copyright consultation services have grown dramatically, which is a service still only found at a
handful of organizations. We expect to see this adopted at more libraries going forward. We also expect
publishing efforts to continue to grow significantly, and expand, i.e., from faculty to graduate students,
undergraduates, and local communities.
