Digital Centers Digital data centers in libraries provide a particularly useful service to scholars and students. The strongest examples go beyond collecting and providing access to data and digital content by bringing together subject specialists, statisticians, and digital media experts to support a spectrum of services and expertise. This centralized service helps to accelerate the use of content and discovery, and the creation of new forms of scholarship. The Johns Hopkins Center for Educational Resources, of which the libraries are a partner, provides impetus “away from print-based repositories to electronic collaboratories that enable application of digital collections and networked services to new approaches in instructional and scholarly communication.” http://www.cer.jhu.edu/ The Alderman and Clemons Libraries at the University of Virginia support a scholars’ lab catering to the digital research and scholarly analysis needs of faculty and advanced students in social sciences and humanities. The lab combines software applications for data analysis, geographic information systems, visual presentations, scanning, and text encoding. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/scholarslab/about/index.html And Columbia University has launched two digital centers: one for social sciences and a second for humanities that will open in 2010. The Digital Social Science Center (DSSC), located in Lehman Library and operated jointly by the Libraries & Columbia University Information Technology, provides a wide range of information and technology assistance for students and faculty. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/dssc/index.html Faculty and Graduate Student Spaces Faculty and graduate students have begun to look to their libraries to provide customized spaces for scholarship, training, quiet concentration, and socializing. A growing number of libraries are working with these constituents to define and deliver targeted responses. The University of Washington’s Health Sciences Library has partnered with dentistry, nursing, medicine, pharmacy, and public health to provide a learning commons for graduate and professional students. Among the amenities are specialized classrooms, a drop-in computer lab providing specialized software and expert assistance with presentations and special projects, and liberalized food and drink policies. http://healthlinks.washington.edu/hsl/commons/ RLI 264 11 Learning and Research Spaces in ARL Libraries: Snapshots of Installations and Experiments ( C O N T I N U E D ) JUNE 2009 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC
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