The culture of digital scholarship

CHICAGO — At the heart of digital scholarship are universal questions, lessons, and principles relating both to the mission of higher education and the shared values that make an academic library culture. But while global in aspirations, digital scholarship starts with local culture drawn from the community. In “The Culture of Digital Scholarship in Academic Libraries,” published by ALA Editions, editors Robin Chin Roemer and Verletta Kern invite readers into their institutional workspace, the University of Washington, gathering voices from a range of positions that speak to the facets of digital scholarship. This mosaic of perspectives reveals the challenges, questions, and personalities that sit at the nexus of academic libraries and digital scholarship culture. Reflecting on UW’s approach, readers will gain insights for their own institutions on topics such as:

• ways to create awareness of digital services through training;
• supporting students as creators of content;
• blending existing analog collections with ongoing digital initiatives using a media lab;
• creating a campus-wide, discipline agnostic, data repository service;
• how a popular digital storytelling workshop spawned digital scholarship across campus;
• digital scholarship consultations, viewed from an instructional technologist’s approach;
• the place of digital scholarship in the fabric of a revitalized urban community;
• four strategies for teaching research skills within an online-only bachelor’s degree program; and
• assessment findings from focus groups, surveys, digital pedagogy projects, and Omeka case studies.

Chin Roemer is the head of Instructional Design and Outreach Services for University of Washington Libraries, where she has worked since 2013. Her publications include the 2015 handbook “Meaningful Metrics: A 21st Century Librarian’s Guide to Bibliometrics, Altmetrics, and Research Impact,” as well as numerous professional articles on altmetrics and digital pedagogy. Kern has served as digital scholarship librarian at the University of Washington Libraries since 2016. She has presented on digital scholarship topics at venues such as the Digital Library Federation and the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC).

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