Understanding Digital Scholarship Needs to Support the Evolving Nature of Academic Research

Date
2017-04-20
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Abstract
Libraries are transforming spaces and services to better support the nature of 21st century research. For example, many academic libraries are developing digital scholarship centres or labs. This lightning talk will provide an overview of two consultation processes employed at the University of Calgary to gather feedback from scholars on how the library could support new modes of research. The University of Calgary undertook two consultation processes: the first was a focused workshop conducted in 2015 with scholars from three multidisciplinary research clusters: arctic studies, smart cities, and visual analytics. The second was a series of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016 with individual scholars from a range of disciplines in the arts and humanities. The workshop participants highlighted common research support needs including data and data repositories,digitization, expertise, space, skills training, and funding for collaborations. The interview participants highlighted similar needs, with space, access to interdisciplinary collaborators, and training/consultation being the most commonly identified research support needs. This talk will be of interest to other academic libraries wishing to reshape library spaces and services to support the research needs of their local community. Key outcomes include: Understand trends in how libraries are supporting the evolving nature of academic resource. Learn about how one library gathered feedback on research support needs from scholars. Understand how existing library resources and expertise can be coordinated and/or reallocated to support new modes of research.
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Keywords
libraries, digital scholarship, research
Citation
Hurrell, C. & Ruddock, K. (2017, April). Understanding Digital Scholarship Needs to Support the Evolving Nature of Academic Research. Presented as part of the AAAL 2017 Spring Meeting, Calgary AB.