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"Looking back over the past 18 months, we have four observations. First, we have learned the critical importance of clearly defining the Sherman Centre's scope and purpose for the campus community. Understanding of digital scholarship's boundaries is still relatively low on all of our campuses. Work in the center falls outside traditional norms for how research is done - the norm being that research is a solitary activity, with no "bumping around" required. In terms of libraries, it is definitely outside the norm. Libraries are traditionally very transaction-based: we count the number of people who enter our doors, ask us research help questions, and attend instruction sessions. We have no mental model for tracking activity within a digital scholarship center, which is inherently more relationship-based. Second, we've learned that the relentless demand for physical space on campus creates pressure on our new center. Faculty members and graduate students are always looking for a place to run their experiments and relocate their staff. We often find ourselves having to turn people away when their work is not advancing the digital scholarship agenda. Saying no is not easy, but it must be done to protect the center's integrity. Third, we've learned of the vital need for patience - both individual and organizational. Digital scholarship centers are not created in a day or even in 18 months. Building a good center requires patience on the part of our senior university administrators, faculty, and staff. A digital scholarship program is built on relationships, as well as on the careers of its scholars. Centers evolve as junior faculty members incorporate digital scholarship into their research and then rise to become senior scholars. Finally, we've discovered the strong need for training and mentorship opportunities on our campus. Our graduate students (like any other graduate students) do not enter their programs with deep digital scholarship skills, but they are e

""Academic libraries are encountering a critical inflection point. In our case it isn't a single technology that is disrupting our established system, but a barrage of advancements in publishing, pedagogy, and user preferences. The landscape is shifting around us, and the future of scholarship requires us to develop new skills, design new environments, and deliver new service capacities. In short, we need new operating models.""

Great talk on the future of librarianship

Jim Neal on the future of libraries

wondering what we can learn from this area and apply in our current (or future?) student engagement?

"What does the "classroom of the future" look like? In contrast to the traditional lecture-oriented room, this increasingly popular kind of space, known as a "studio classroom," emphasizes group learning and collaboration. But designers might not always get it right. AV expert Michael Leiboff shares 14 distinct characteristics of a successful studio classroom design."

Nothing earth-shatteringly original here, but a good summary of basic ideas for a studio learning environment.

Some similarities, some differences in what McMaster is doing and possible futures we have discussed.

Barbara Fister on "power struggle over what a library is-and who gets to decide"

I love the final paragraph "Another way of putting that is: Do not spend eight years getting a doctorate with the sole purpose of becoming digital humanist, as you would be better off just learning to code and getting a job as a software engineer. However, if you have already made the unwise choice to enroll in a humanities Ph.D. program, one way to salvage what will otherwise be your eventual entrée onto a jobless hellscape might be to "disrupt" your Eliot (George, T.S., whichever) and start using technology to analyze, distribute, or supplement your research. The worst possible outcome, after all, will be that more than three people read your work."

"The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship"