nitle shared academics: new directions for digital collections by mark christel
DESCRIPTION
Two decades after the advent of the Web, digital collections are a regular part of academic library business. This seminar’s leaders reviewed some new approaches to digital collections taken by libraries at small colleges. In particular, they discussed collections developed around faculty teaching and research interests, student-created collections and exhibits, library publishing programs, and library support for digital field scholarship. In this seminar, Mark Dahl, NITLE fellow and director of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College, and panelists Mark Christel, director of libraries at the College of Wooster, Anneliese Dehner, digital projects developer at Lewis & Clark, Isaac Gilman, assistant professor and scholarly communications and research services librarian at Pacific University, and Allegra Swift, head of scholarly communications and publishing for the Claremont Colleges Library, as they delve into new directions for digital collections. These slides are from Mark Christel's presentation.TRANSCRIPT
New Directions for Digital Collections at Academic Libraries
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Mark ChristelDirector of Libraries, College of Wooster
&Project Director of the Five Colleges of Ohio’s current
Mellon grant focused on Digital Scholarship
Why am I here???
A Tale of Two Grants(and how our thinking has evolved)
Next Steps in the Next Generation Library: Integrating Digital Collections into the Liberal Arts Curriculum (awarded Jan. 2010 – 3 years)
http://www.ohio5.org/portal/
Digital Collections: from Projects to Pedagogy and Scholarship
http://digitalscholarship.ohio5.org/
The Five Colleges of Ohio• Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio
Wesleyan, and The College of Wooster• Consortium created in 1995• 58 librarians & 74 library staff• Over $18,000,000 annual library budget• Serving 1,000+ faculty and nearly 11,000
undergraduate students• All OhioLINK members (early importance
of the DRC/DSpace)
Insert standard disclaimers, fine print and caveats here . . .
Highlights
• 50 curricular digital collections • 5 institutional repositories & two open access
resolutions• Development of a very effective, collaborative
network to support digital projects• Numerous staff development opportunities• Faculty, student, and librarians presentations
Goals of the Original Mellon Grant1. Establish a curriculum development program in
which librarians will partner with faculty to identify, build, and integrate digital collections into their courses;
2. Enhance access to our institutional scholarship;3. Initiate a professional development program for
library staff;4. Develop a shared digital infrastructure to support
new initiatives; and5. Create the Five Colleges of Ohio Digital Collections
Portal.
Evolution of Goal #1
Establish a curriculum development program in which librarians will partner with faculty to identify, build, and integrate digital collections into their courses
Continued development of curriculum-driven digital collections in partnership with students and faculty while expanding the scope of the projects whenever possible to include digital scholarship practices
Evolution of Goal #2
Enhance access to our institutional scholarship
Additional efforts to capture and provide open access to student and faculty scholarship
Evolution of Goal #3
Initiate a professional development program for library staff
Continued professional staff development and collaboration across the Ohio Five library organizations to best support the needs of our faculty
Evolution of Goal #4
Develop a shared digital infrastructure to support new initiatives
Hire a digital scholar who will leverage development of our new collections, support digital scholarship efforts, and engage our campus communities in related considerations of pedagogy
Evolution of Goal #5
Create the Five Colleges of Ohio Digital Collections Portal
(if we build it, they will come . . .)
Create new collaborations with similar institutions, particularly those focused upon the digital humanities, and broadly disseminate the products and processes developed under the grant
(hey, maybe we could build something together?)
Summary of our current approach
• More interested in the learning that happens during the process
• More collaborative, particularly in the early planning stages – library, IT, faculty, etc.
• More conscious of necessity to approach this as a team – specializations, defined roles
• Looking more broadly, seeing how our projects and content might partner with other initiatives
• Role of libraries in the digital liberal arts
Some examples of our early projects (if time allows!)
Photo: Creative Commons
History of Fashion (Denison University)
350+ garments from 1830-20th Cent.
Costume Design & History of Fashion courses
Medieval Manuscripts (Kenyon College)
Exhibit & student presentations
Baist’s Real Estate Atlases of Columbus, OH (Ohio Wesleyan University)
Combines detailed historic atlas scans with contemporary maps (“geo-rectified” maps)
Next step? Perhaps developing an app so students can access the data and contribute new content in the field.
GIS-based Photographic Archive (College of Wooster)
Digital file cabinetActive field workCameras in trees!Coming soon: Attack of the drones . . .See a video about the project
King-Crane Commission Digital Collection (Oberlin College)
Delegation appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to visit the former Ottoman territories following the First World War
Papers at Stanford, Library of Congress, Boston University, and Oberlin – virtually re-united
750+ items
Senior Independent Study Theses (College of Wooster)
5,400 undergraduate theses – working toward over 20,000
Small number will become openly accessible each year
If you’re thirsty for more . . .
• See the complete “Lightning Talks” YouTube video (running nearly 2 hours!) of nearly all 50 collections