A new document, “A Call for Participation and Action,” details Kelvin Smith Library’s plan to facilitate the creation of alliances at Case Western Reserve University dedicated to advancing digital scholarship programming and services. The document outlines a process to accomplish this through a series of collaborative and community-building conversations among the researcher community (faculty and students) and the digital service provider community, as well as fostering conversations between these two communities. The document, which is available for campuswide review online, is a follow up to the “White Paper on Envisioning Freedman Center 2.0” issued by the library in April 2013.
Following the issuance of the “White Paper” last spring, the library conducted many discussions with groups across campus to ascertain how best to move the ideas into action, and site visits were held at institutions with nationally recognized digital scholarship programs. Rather than set out a process that would be too ambitious or insufficiently inclusive, this new “Call for Participation and Action” outlines a dual-track process of conversations within and across the two communities as a means to develop specific actions that enable a new alliance of willing partners to grow and that is built upon the significant record of past successes in support of digital scholarship.
The document is an early response to Think Beyond the Possible: 2013-2018, the new university strategic plan that calls for expanded support for digital scholarship and articulates the importance of advancing learning and research through bold new interdisciplinary collaborations and the innovative application of technology. In particular, Think Beyond the Possible states that the university will encourage entrepreneurial thinking across campus, such as by “completing the redesign of the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship as an incubation space for creative and collaborative endeavors available to faculty and students who wish to engage in advanced research employing digital scholarship methods and technology.”
This new “Call for Participation” document is a continuous planning and implementation document to build the essential new cross-campus alliances. As a working document, it will continue to be modified as the conversations move from cooperation to collaboration, and eventually into shared services in support of digital scholarship programs across campus.
The library plans to hold digital scholarship exploratory kickoff meetings in the near future, and comments about the new document are welcomed.