 to the CNI Digital Scholarship Planning webinar series. And if you participated in previous sessions, welcome back. I know many of you are working from home and some of you are back on campus. I hope you're all doing well during this difficult time of the pandemic. I'm Joan Lippincott, Associate Executive Director Emerita of CNI and I'm the moderator of this nine part series. If you've missed some webinars or would like to re-watch or share the presentations, we have recordings available for the first eight sessions as well as a set of questions to guide planning discussions on your own campus. This is the ninth and final session of this webinar series and we'll follow a different format than the earlier sessions. We have a panel of three individuals and I'll be asking them a set of questions about successes of library-based digital scholarship programs, roadblocks to success, getting a seat at the institutional table and reflections on how digital scholarship programs might change after the pandemic. We'll take questions from participants at the end and then I'll present a short wrap up to the series. Please type your questions in the chat box at any time. In addition, after the formal one-hour session is over, we'll open the mics in case some of you wish to verbally ask questions. The chat box is also available to communicate with each other or with me or our technical lead, Beth Seacrest. During the presentations and the panel, all participants will be muted. And now I'd like to welcome our distinguished panelists, Dan Cohen, Vice Provost for Information Collaboration, Dean of the Library and Professor of History at Northeastern University. You may also know him from his work as Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America or DPLA and his work as Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Next, Tom Hickerson is the former Vice Provost for Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary and before that the Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies and Special Collections at Cornell University Library. Next, Patricia Sway is the Program Officer for Public Knowledge at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Previously, she worked in the libraries at Penn State University where she co-founded the Department of Publishing and Curation Services, now the Department of Research Informatics and Publishing and she was originally a Russian Literature Scholar. More extensive biographies are on our website. So welcome to our panelists and I'm gonna start with a question. From your perspective, what have been the major successes of library-based digital scholarship programs in recent years? And I'd like to start with you, Dan, please go ahead. Thanks so much, Joan. And I first just wanna thank you for organizing this series and for your continued leadership in terms of disseminating best practices around digital scholarship. I think the entire community really appreciates all of your work. Also great to be here with Patricia and Tom and I'm looking forward to this hour. So your question is a good one. I think about the major successes and I think what I'd like to focus on in just my two minutes are just a sort of larger point which is I think when we think about digital scholarship we tend to think about projects or software initiatives. But I would really focus when we talk about success on some broader meta issues and namely that digital scholarship programs I think at their best success I think have done this important role of connecting parts of the university. So for instance, connecting faculty from different departments together say computer science and history or design and journalism or connecting those outside the library with critical departments within the library such as the archives. And I also think within the library they play this sort of connective role as well. I think earlier on maybe a decade or two ago digital scholarship programs were distinct where we're sort of separate units but I think the best digital scholarship groups have actually joined elements within the library in addition to this larger role in the university. So facilitating for instance the transmission of digitized materials into teaching and learning programs within the library or allowing a metadata group that might have been working on the back end of the library with the front end research program within the library. So that's really what I would summarize is that at least in recent years some of the key advances that digital scholarship programs have made. Thank you, Dan. Really important points. Patricia, how about you? What is your perspective? Yeah, well collaboration was gonna be one of the things that I said I was gonna say and I'm so glad that you started off with that Dan and articulated that. I think another success of digital scholarship programs could be the roles, the different roles that have emerged in libraries as a result of investing in these kinds of activities. 10 years ago we didn't have digital scholarship librarians and we didn't have folks who were doing data services as part of that realm. So I think this has been very, it's been sort of like an injection of innovative approaches to doing research that is digitally inflected and having that kind of support has been really key. The only other thing that I would say is because of that kind of support and because of support for those new roles as well as support for digital scholarship, there's also been, it's also been possible to realize an almost fully digital research workflow. And if I were showing slides today I would be showing a slide that my former foundation colleague, Don Waters used to show, which shows how we have gone from a sort of physical-based workflow to a digital workflow using digitized materials, being able to encode those materials, being able to transcribe OCR text, being able to interpret web-based content or digitized materials via annotation, for example, and even trying to crack the challenge of digitally publishing scholarship. So those two things, digital scholarship services, support roles and being able to support a digital research workflow. Thank you, Patricia. Interesting points. Tom, how about you? Well, pardon me. First, I wanna say hello to everyone, particularly to voice my pleasure in joining with my distinguished colleagues here this morning, but everyone that's participating and everyone that's participated in this very impressive series. Digital scholarship programs are particularly important because they provided a different model for libraries to interact and align with today's academic research. It positions the library to move beyond traditional collection-based strengths and transactional services. When I discussed traditional strengths of the library with an associate dean research in the arts faculty at Calgary, he responded, but we don't do research like that anymore. Digital scholarship programs give us the opportunity to reshape our role directly in response to new and multidisciplinary forms of research and teaching. As you have heard throughout this series and just remarkable presentations throughout, these collaborations have identified for scholars and students evolving library capacities that are of particular value today. It also positions libraries well in the development of new organizational partnerships on campus and greatly beyond the campus, something that was illustrated by a number of the presentations. So it's a very special opportunity for us that's come open to us through these digital scholarship programs. Thank you, Tom. I'm curious whether each of you believes that in the case of the successes, in the working with new forms of scholarship, with reaching out to faculty and administrators in the university with integrating it into the entire library, with integrating the workflow for digital programs, is it, in your view, top down? Does it start with a leadership? Is it bottom up? Is it a combination? What do you think helps move things along within a library? Dan? Sure. Can I take all the above? Yes. I really wanna underline Patricia's great point, which I think the development actually of some new roles, which act as kind of facilitators, I think. People, you know, digital scholarship librarians who really see the full picture, have the tech literacy, understand some of the traditional library roles that Tom mentioned as well, but that it can also act as a very strong outreach and partner and collaborator with faculty strikes me as being really key. But as I'm sure we'll discuss later in the hour, there are also organizational and financial and all kinds of issues where I do think leadership matters. And then I also, you know, going back to my days at George Mason, I also think that digital scholarship institutions have been very good at sort of bubbling up great ideas from every level of staff. I think unlike other parts of the university that may be, let's say, a little bit more faculty driven, what's been wonderful to see and I've been at a few places where this has happened is to see everyone from, you know, software developers to metadata specialists, archivists to those digital scholarship librarians develop ideas that can be transmitted around. I think it's a really special thing that unlike the sort of solitary faculty member working on a monograph, which of course is always over a bomb, right? They're also collaborating with archivists and librarians and so forth. But I really think in digital scholarship environments, you have the chance to have, you know, half dozen, a dozen people working together on a project. And it sort of encourages a really fertile interaction between folks who have different roles within that kind of organization and can pursue new ideas because of that, the hive mind that occurs within those digital scholarship programs. Thank you. Tom, please go ahead. Pardon me, I want to pick up on the last point that Dan made and speaking to a number of projects that research projects in various disciplinary areas. One of the things that was so special about this was that in fact, those scholars work directly with a variety of library staff who normally don't have that kind of interaction. And it was so exciting for them to be able to sit at the table and offer suggestions to have their knowledge and their expertise appreciated by the researchers in a very explicit fashion. We had hired a very new metadata librarian. And so she was in her first professional year and she commented later that she had never imagined that when she was a new librarian, she would be sitting at the table directly interacting with scholars and how this had just raised her appreciation of her knowledge set, but also in her role in research and her role in the university. And I think for many staff it identified them after working in the quote back room for so long, suddenly they were playing a park in the university and in a way that they had not perceived before. So a really exciting enhancement for staff. Thanks. Patricia, anything you'd like to add on this point or something else? I think just building on what's been said in terms of all of the above, the leadership is generally the place where the funding that makes possible the funding for these kinds of roles and for these kinds of programs. I think sometimes what can get overlooked is the fact that the leadership and maybe middle managers can also help facilitate some better understanding about what digital scholarship is, what it involves and having understanding that it is extremely team-based. Sometimes that's not articulated, I think, when roles like that are introduced or when programs like that are introduced. So I guess my contribution here is a flavor of what Dan has said. Thank you. Well, let's move on to our next question where there are successes. There have also normally been some roadblocks. So what do you believe have been the major roadblocks to success of the development of digital scholarship programs? Because some of what you described in response to the first question from my point of view was rosy and wonderful. But I also hear some stories that aren't so rosy and wonderful and what do you think accounts for that? Let's start with Patricia on this one. So digital scholarship programs and projects often get started because of grant funding or soft funding. And it's usually because of a nifty new idea or software application or platform that is the attraction to funders. And all that is great in getting the initiative started, but what happens when the funding runs out and there hasn't been the institutional investment, perhaps it was anticipated, they can take over, they can continue the effort that was started. What I'm trying to get at here is not only the fact that we as funders tend to be attracted to what's innovative and new and shiny, but the fact that we also, and we meaning funders as well as higher education institutions, libraries, archives, where these activities take place, still don't understand as well as we should what it takes to persist a digital scholarship program and what it takes to maintain the activities that have begun and that have flourished, but that need continual funding or eventually even some capital to keep them going and to update them. So I think that that's definitely a weakness that we are so focused on the innovative and the shiny that we forget that there needs to be some attention to repair and maintenance down the road. Even for positions, a lot of these positions are hired singly rather than as a team and there can be some burnout in these positions. So I would say that has been a roadblock and I'll just introduce one additional roadblock and that is as vital as these programs have become and as popular as they've become. I mean, they are obviously a very rich part of the library organization. There hasn't been still some uptake in promotion and tenure guidelines to support the outputs of these programs. So you can do all that work as a faculty, but you still struggle to get credit for it. And so that's something that I think will need resolution over time. It isn't a new problem, but again, like the maintenance problem, it's something that needs attention and is that exciting to address like a new software application? Really important points. Thank you. How about you, Tom? What do you see as the roadblocks? Well, I'll start out first. Patricia has spoken to the limitation of funding by the Mellon Foundation and other similar funding supporters, but I wanna say how important that funding has been. And yes, we need that funding for innovation. And I will say that the funders are often very creative contributors themselves. And so that we should see them as part of the environment in which we work. I will say as Patricia indicated, digital scholarship programs have drawn a good deal of positive attention within libraries, but often they're not organizationally embraced as core components of the library's support for campus research. So ongoing substantial funding has not been reallocated from other areas of library operation that may not be so important today and reallocated to sustain and expand the impact of digital scholarship programs. Some tough decisions have to be made to realize the full potential. Permanent staffing is sometimes minimal and service support is often dependent on student wages. Grants shared with academic departments are often short-term and do not always build stable capacity. We've also sometimes been constrained by our focus on the humanities. All research is digital and our functional strengths are not disciplinary in their scope of application. Metadata services and visualization are vital for climatologists and medical researchers as well as for literary scholars. I agree, Tom, really important points, thank you. And Dan, what do you think are some major roadblocks? Sure, some of these will probably be footnotes to my colleagues on the panel, but I guess the first thing actually I would say is that I think some of the hurdles or roadblocks they're the flip side of what we discussed in the first question, which is that as exciting as it is to play a collaboration or coordination role, actually those roles are very hard. When I was at the Digital Public Library of America, probably some people on this call have heard me say this, that I viewed it more as a social or political project rather than a technical project. I mean, it had technical aspects, but it had to do with coordination and collaboration among thousands of libraries, archives, and museums. And that's just very difficult. And within a university environment where as Patricia noted, people might have variable incentives, particularly those who might be on a tenure track line. Those tensions can arise as part of collaboration around projects. I'd also say again as a flip side of what I said earlier in terms of the benefits of digital scholarship programs, things that are betwixt and between, things that are not quite in a department, maybe not quite in a library are often hard to sustain. This is just organizational management 101. I think there are a lot of institutes and centers in the university that are wholly within a department or within a home college. Those are often much easier to find sustainable funding beyond the sort of venture capital of grant funding. And so I think thinking about something that spans multiple parts of an organization is actually quite hard and probably some more thought needs to be applied in that area. Finally, I'll just say, and I really do think this is a footnote to Tom and Patricia. I'm not sure I know of a single digital scholarship program that is not overstretched. I think these tend to be very talented and caffeinated sets of people who really wanna work on a lot of new software projects and wanna collaborate with not only people at their own institution, but actually nationally and internationally with others. I think it's a very online group. And so when that happens, what you have is a sort of mismatch of ambition with capacity. And I think that that also is an ongoing program. I know it's just hard to kind of do everything that these digital scholarship groups wanna do. I think some of the participants getting back to the collaboration part, some of the participants in a digital scholarship program may not understand the amount of work that would go into a specific, let's say, new project or a new feature. And so you often have this kind of the demands on the digital scholarship group within the library outstripping the capacity. And I think that's also an ongoing hurdle. Thank you. Do any of you wish to comment further on your colleagues or amplify your comment? I'm gonna ask then Dan or others. I have found very few digital scholarship programs that have clear guidelines on what they will or won't accept as a project. And do you think that I'm being too kind of rational in expecting that kind of thing to develop, say as a long ago reference librarian you had usually some guidelines as to what types of questions you would spend what amount of time on and follow up and that kind of thing, which is of course much more limited in scope. But do you think that that's a step as programs mature that they could take or not particularly? So I'll say on that, I like the idea of setting up guidelines. Certainly tried to do it in my own context. In reality, I think it's actually kind of hard because I think a lot of digital scholarship because it's emergent, it's a little bit amorphous and it's actually hard to maybe know at the beginning of a project, how much work something is. I mean, you definitely know certain parts of the parameters. What my party line on this is maybe not to rule anything out, but to see if you can sort of really work with others to define the scope better. And even more importantly to shoehorn it wherever possible into existing platforms and structures that you have in your own digital scholarship program. So for me, if you can take a project and put it in Omega, thanks to the funding of the Mullen Foundation and others, I was developed and it is still ongoing. Those platforms help to reduce the kind of structural load, the cognitive load, the maintenance load that has to happen. The sustainability, I think, becomes better. So I think as long as you work to, again, not just reduce the scope, but to say, you know what, we can't have all the bells and whistles. But if we put it on in this existing structure that we know how to run and we know how to use, we have people who are expert in that area, then we can go forward with it. So I think it's a sort of two-pronged approach there. Thank you. Tom, go ahead. So a point on this interaction is when you really have people in digital scholarship programs working closely with researchers in their projects and with their graduate students, one of the things that we need to be quite open about is what we can do and what we can't do. We would love to do it all. And researchers would love for us to do it all in many cases, but we need to have a real conversation. And one of the things that researchers have commented to us in some of our grant programs is we don't know what you can do or how much you can do. And so I think an important element of what Dan has just described is having a good common understanding among the staff and their capacity to convey that to their research partners. Thank you. Patricia, anything to add or ready to move? Only that I think, you know, both of these approaches speak to flexibility. I do like the idea of having guidance because I think guidance can also reflect strategy for the digital scholarship program. If you know what you'll accept, you know you're doing that because of strategic priorities for the program. But I do understand that sometimes there are things of the moment, a particular team is coming together organically and you wanna be able to take advantage of that. And so I think building in flexibility for those kinds of opportunities is really important and understanding that planning, a planning phase can go a long way. Thank you. We'll go on to our next question. All three of you have commented and we've heard throughout this series, how important it is to take an institutional view of digital scholarship, what's happening in other parts of the institution. And it's really important, I think, for libraries to have a seat at the table, whatever that table is, actually it's often several tables where institutional processes, decisions and budgets for infrastructure, for technologies, for support, for storage, for all kinds of things are being made and resources allocated. So I'd like to know if you have recommendations for how libraries can get a seat at those tables. And let's start with you, Tom. We need to be at all the tables. And I think that that opportunity is available to us and we need to be strategic about our pursuit of those opportunities and we need to be strategic in marketing, knowledge of really what is a redefinition for research libraries today. Digital scholarship programs bring a diversity of library strengths together to enhance research and teaching. And these strengths include visualization, metadata services, GIS, web development, VR, AI, maker spaces, special collections, copyright services, digitization and data curation repository services. Who doesn't need those? They're really central elements in research and teaching today. And so we need to acknowledge and take credit for our tremendous capacity to contribute. We need to build links within the library so that in fact the various departments and the various staff participating in those departments have a sense of their partners in addressing these issues and to work together to exploit the common resources and we must partner campus-wide and seek to in doing so to expand the rich this rich constellation of services and expertise. And expertise is a critical element as I'll comment in just a moment. But also as I've commented, we really need to devote a good deal of attention in to how to tell the new story. The old story has been around for a long time. We need to work at how to tell the new story. In addition to partnerships with IT units, teaching and learning centers and academic departments, we must connect with the university research administration. And as I've said, demonstrate our importance to the research enterprise. We offer significant economies of scale for the university. And as Calgary's Associate Vice President Research, Penny Pexman said at our symposium in Washington last December, libraries can play a crucial role in developing faculty abilities. And that also applies to graduate students and initiating synergistic connections among faculty. These needs exist on every campus today. This redefinition and repositioning is what will bring us to new tables with enhanced influence and enhanced recognition. Thank you, Tom. How about you, Dan? Oh, that was very well put, Tom. You know, I will add, I think all of the trends in scholarship are heading in a direction that we're, you know, having a digital scholarship group in the library makes tremendous sense, right? Almost every field has become at least data inflected if not significantly involved in, you know, the management and visualization and integration of data sources, you know, humanities, social sciences, STEM fields. So I think there, you know, there's a clear leadership role to play. I think on the kind of marketing and attaching yourself to strategic initiatives, I think that's another good point that Tom would make. Just one brief example, our university is really trying to make, I think particularly given what's happened this year, a very strong push to become better integrated into our community in Boston or, you know, a university that sits in the middle of Boston and we have tremendous archives of the surrounding communities and social justice groups in the area. And so seeing that, you know, the university wants to make a significant advance on that front and knowing that between our archives and our digital scholarship group is again, a facilitator or enabler of the use and, you know, visualization of our community's history and culture has been, I think, really important. So I think keeping an eye on, you know, what your university's overall strategic priorities are and knowing what your strengths are within your digital scholarship group would be pretty key. I'll also say that I do think it's really important for leaders within the library to be well integrated with the other leadership structures within the university. That really varies by university, but our terrific head of the digital scholarship group at Northeastern Julia Flanders, and many of you know, has a joint appointment in English. So she's integrated into our Humanities and Social Sciences College. She's also part of New Lab. As am I actually as a joint faculty member appointment and New Lab is our Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences Group, faculty-driven. I sit on the Dean's Council with the deans of the colleges themselves as an equal partner. That might be an unusual experience perhaps for a dean of the library, but you know, I've been very gratified to sort of really have a seat and be a full participant in those things. So, you know, I think those kinds of very strong connections are important. I think the library can also facilitate that by thinking about, you know, exactly how you structure appointments, the kinds of faculty members you bring in, and just doing some basic politicking, to be honest, if I can be frank, within the university to, you know, have even, you know, mid and entry-level folks within your group reach out and participate in academic seminars and, you know, get involved with projects and so that you are valued across the university. Thank you, Dan. Patricia. You know, both Tom and Dan were so eloquent. I'm not sure that I have much more to add other than just keeping on top of assessment. And so, you know, Tom bringing up the story, I think is gonna be increasingly important. Knowing how to tell that story, not just relying on metrics or mechanisms for analytics, but actually having stories to tell that show how a particular service or a particular collaboration has been effective and has shown, you know, the strengths of the campus and the faculty and the students. So bravo to Tom and Dan for staying all that for me. Thank you, Patricia. I'm gonna go ahead and move on to the final question that I have. And then just to remind you, if you weren't here at the outset, after our panelists answer this fourth question, we'll open it to you, the participants for your own Q&A. And then I'm going to do a brief wrap-up of the webinar series. So our fourth question is, in the aftermath of the pandemic, which we're all just hoping and hoping and hoping will come sooner than later, how will digital scholarship programs change? And Dan, we're gonna start with you on this question. So yeah, just, you know, pandemic has had no effect whatsoever our lives across the university and digital scholarship groups, of course. I mean, I'll be brief. I think, you know, it makes digital scholarship work more important than ever because we have to be more responsive, more flexible in the way that we do our work now. We've had to do that all year. I mean, my entire staff has had to change week to week, day to day. I mean, there's just so much going on. And I've always thought that one of the advantages of digital media and technology is that it is flexible. It's adaptable. It can be used to different purposes. It's a medium that can be highly responsive if done well. And so I just think we will have to continue to be very responsive to what's going on in the world around us and to use the best of digital media technology to make better and more humane approaches to what we see. Thank you. Patricia. Flexibility is definitely going to be a part of it. I do think that in some ways, because of the versatility of the roles and of staff in these programs, perhaps that's a versatility that will translate across other staff roles in the organization. I know that there have been situations where because of the nature of the position or the work or the role, it's been hard to do that kind of work from home. And maybe there'll be more imagination into ways of automatically or nimbly repurposing certain positions or certain activities so that they can take place off campus. I also wonder if we'll be more attentive to challenges of continuity of service, continuity of research and teaching that will go beyond just holding things over Zoom. I think that there are already groups and organizations thinking in those terms. So less dependency on space. I am curious to know what the investments will be post-pandemic on space, on facilities, given that we have not been able to take advantage of them because of the challenges of the pandemic. So I guess the only other thing is just understanding that the portfolio for online services is probably going to grow. That there'll be probably, I'm thinking toolkits or guidance that will enable librarians and libraries to make that transition without a whole lot of angst and issues and problems. Thank you. And Tom. Oh, not long ago I saw an article in the New York Times about the pandemic, which was headlined in bold letters saying, no one knows what's going to happen. And that is okay. It reminds me of what I often say about designing libraries. Design for the library you know, for the library you can imagine, and for the library you cannot yet imagine. We've had months now of something most of us could not imagine. To our credit, we are accommodating the changes, but ideally we are also recognizing that the changes in research and teaching, in the student experience, and in our role in the campus community will continue beyond the pandemic, and continue to change. So perhaps the best thing we can do is to recognize this and employ permeable thinking and our programming, training, and architectural and spatial design. When we built the Taylor Family Digital Library at Calgary, we had raised flooring and amountable walls installed throughout most of the building. We wanted a space that could be altered and repurposed without major construction. Today, lab next as a digital scholarships space created in response to researcher identified needs. It's an open and flexible space including small work rooms and a maker space located as a hub for a constellation of related services. But it could be something else tomorrow. Hopefully, a comfort with and capacity for change is how we will deal with our current circumstance. And also prepare ourselves for tomorrow. Thank you, Tom. Do any of you want to add to your comments or question one of your fellow panelists or expand on your thoughts? Go ahead or raise your hand, Dan. Well, I'll just say briefly, I think the space question is a really interesting one. We're actually at the beginning of renovation of our library. And I think that point on Tom's third point about, how do you design for a future you can't imagine as a really media and interesting one? And I think we agree with the direction that that question takes us. Thank you. Patricia, did you want to add something? I don't think so. Again, I've learned so much from both my colleagues on the panel and their comments. And I love the expression permeable thinking and just that ability to be able to repurpose, rethink, even to some extent, think of it as repair restoration is going to be key, I think to life after the pandemic in libraries. Well, thank you so much, Patricia, Dan and Tom. You've provided some great perspectives on both the past and the future of digital scholarship programs. And now we'll take some questions from participants and then I'll provide a brief wrap up of the series. And so if you'll put your questions into the chat, I will then feed them to our panelists. So our first question is, how do you balance strategic marketing and illuminating the role of digital scholarship with very real staffing bandwidth and funding issues? So in other words, if you're out there talking up your program, but you're reaching the limitations of what your staff can handle, how do you make sure that you're somewhat keeping that in balance? Tom, do you want to address that first? Well, I'll go back to the making hard decisions. And my quote of the research dean, parts of our previous traditional strengths are not as valuable today. Much more material is available through open access and through open science. And so we really have to think about what is in the 21st century, what is the most important strength of the library? What are they today? And then be responsive to what will they be tomorrow? And so we all say it many times, the question is, what do we not do? Thank you. Patricia, any thoughts? I was nodding because I totally agree with Tom. What do you not do is gonna be key to figuring out this problem of bandwidth, for sure. Thank you. Dan, anything to add? All right, our next question is, what parameters do you recommend regarding when should library digital scholarship staff be recognized as co-authors or co-researchers? And so this could apply to publications, to presentations, et cetera. Does the Mellon Foundation have any guidelines for that, or do you look at proposals for how people's roles will be recognized, Patricia? Or is that something that you think, that you have some thoughts on? I don't know that we, well, we want to obviously see collaborators recognized in some way on a proposal. And that could very well mean that if they have a major role in the effort that we want to see some indication that they have participated in the design of the project. But when it comes to actual parameters to recommend for recognizing co-authorship or co-or collaboration on a project, that's a tricky one. And I think part of it has to do with the fact that these contributions, collaborative contributions aren't often recognized or credited by the organization. And so I think I'm going to defer to my panelists, my fellow panelists as to what do they have any ideas on that front. Thank you. Tom, we know in the sciences there's an increasing movement to have a huge list of co-authors in some cases role specified on publications. Is that something that you saw at all at Calvary where some of your staff involved co-authors or co-presenters on some of the projects you work with there? What we saw probably more often than specifically credit for a scholarly communication is the opportunity to be co-participants in academic grants. And for one of our literary scholars her co-participants for a major grant included the head of our spatial numeric data services because of his expertise in GIS and also included our visualization coordinator. And interestingly, we've had cases where people in digitization who are applying new methodologies to produce a different kind of digital image to be incorporated into data analysis are also getting substantial credit. So I, and we've certainly done, we brought our partners to CNI as well. And so trying to have them join with us as well as us join with them. And as a digital historian and someone who's worked on projects for many years, I'm sure you've encountered this from different perspectives as a PI and as an administrator, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, maybe this is a little too simplistic, but I sort of feel like in an era where there can be a thousand co-authors or co-researchers on an article that comes out of the CERN or the Large Hadron Collider, I think we can credit eight or 10 other people on our digital scholarship program. It doesn't seem like we're wasting that many pixels to really let everyone who's been involved in the project share at least a bit in the limelight. I think it's essential for morale. And frankly, I just think it's ethically right that if a librarian or an archivist or software developer has contributed to the conceptualization or made some really key tweak that enables the sort of front-end scholarship, the analytical part to be better realized than that person should be credited. And I think it's healthy for an organization to provide more widespread credit and also I think a way forward for, again, the true recognition of the role that these groups play across the university. Thank you. Our next question is one that I'm sure is on the minds of lots of our participants. Where would you advise a library that doesn't yet have a strong central digital scholarship services team or department to start? What would be the essential supporting positions and skills? And note that the library may have some of these things in existence, but they're not coordinated or marketed in that way. Who would like to start? Tom? So just a quick comment is to, as the questioner has mentioned, is to recognize that what we have to do is provide a constellation of services. And they must be conveyed in a unified fashion. But in many cases, we already have many of the strengths. We just need, pardon me, we just need to be able to bring them to bear in a successful and impactful fashion. And one of the things that I found particularly important in doing that is someone who is a coordinator who works between the various library units, but also interacts directly with the researchers. Researchers don't know how to go from one spot in the library to another spot to another spot. So we need a coordinator to actually give a coherent response to the research need. Thank you. We're gonna take one final question and then I'm going to do a wrap up. The question is, do you cut the baby in half kind of question? Just prior to the pandemic, we received funding from the provost to renovate space to create a digital scholarship center, the design plans for which it had already been put on hold once, but now funding has been paused. But they also need additional staff positions and expertise to implement their programmatic vision. Should we continue to advocate for the build out of a digital scholarship center or instead focus on expanding staff expertise as our top funding focus? So I don't know this individual's institution nor do you and I'm sure there are many factors involved, but do you have any advice to provide? I'll just say that digital scholarship is people. At the end of the day, it's people much more than space. And just back to Tom's point, we don't know what the future is gonna hold. I mean, there have been libraries that have built out giant VR centers. I'm not sure that VR is the future. I don't even know what's gonna happen in five or 10 years. So to me, I think the most important thing is to stock your institution with talented people. That is the number one thing to do. I think Tom is absolutely right if you have someone in a sense do a survey and catalog all those talents so that you can provide a menu of services from your existing staff. So one might have a little bit of specialty here or there. You can essentially organically start to build out a digital scholarship group without renovating a space and hardwiring a whole bunch of things together before you actually have the expertise to really staff it and to pursue the kinds of questions that you'd like to pursue. And I hope our panelists don't mind if I give you the last word there so that I have a little time for the wrap up and I hope you'll join me in thanking our speakers. If they're able to stay, we'll continue our discussion after my wrap up but thank you so very, very much for your time, your expertise for sharing those viewpoints with us. And now I'm going to do a very brief wrap up and first I wanna say once again, thank you so much to our panelists, Dan Cohen, Tom Hickerson, Patricia Sway but also a big thank you to CNI Clifford Lynch enthusiastically approved the proposal I made to do this webinar series and I've received support from Diane Goldenberg Hart, Jackie Udall, Sharon Adams Angelo Cruz and Beth Seacrest they're responsible for the website, for the registration process, for the listserv, for getting those videos up and out so very quickly and I owe them a lot, so thank you. So I want to just reinforce some of the things I've taken away from the series. Some are reinforcing viewpoints already held, some have changed my thinking about some things but at its heart, I think it's so important to understand that digital scholarship programs support the core mission of the university in research, in learning and in service or community and understanding how to articulate that to administrators and to staff in the library and around the university is critically important, I think. And I think it's also important to understand as you're developing a program, whether you're at the beginning or at a stage where you're expanding your program to think about what kind of program you're developing and I would say you might be starting at the service provider role which is fine and really important. Most programs really want to become genuine collaborators and at least some of the projects with which they work but Greg Raschke in our previous session on space and place talked about also the role of the library as expanding the idea of the possible and it's somewhat akin to Tom Hickerson saying imagining what you can't even imagine at this point and he says it in a much more articulate way but having that expertise and showcasing new forms of scholarship may spark ideas of researchers, graduate students and even undergraduates about what's possible in their own discipline and move them into new areas. I also think it's continually important for libraries to stress that they are the neutral ground. They are the place where interdisciplinary research and projects can flourish when multidisciplinary research can flourish and they provide opportunities for students and faculties in all disciplines to participate in new forms of research learning and communication of research results regardless of whether they have the funds to be able to do that in their home departments or colleges. And as we've heard today and in some of the earlier webinars administrative leadership is key and by this I'm talking about administrative leadership in the library at the dean and director level and to me also very importantly at the associate university librarian level communicating to staff what this is about what new forms of research are about and why the library is doing it. There are a lot of people in libraries who still will say I don't understand why the library is doing this and it needs to be communicated in a clear and really impactful statement. Establishing digital scholarship as a priority for the library clearly doing so not having it as an add-on peripheral service and that it does involve rethinking staff roles. We've heard this theme of collaboration throughout the webinar series and at the institutional level it means having a seat at many of the tables as we talked about today. It's particularly important when there's institution-wide planning going on for infrastructure and it enables the library if they're at these tables to seek partners for particular projects or particular initiatives to get to know people both at the administrative level and at the grassroots level. And for me, and this is something I don't hear as much about but as an outsider from I worked in four universities before I came to CNI but now I look at university programs from an outsider's viewpoint and I often wonder how researchers and students have a clue where to go for particular types of help or technology or expertise because it's usually scattered around campus and there's no coherent view into that suite of services, expertise and technologies. Collaboration within the library is incredibly important. We've heard that today emphasized many times that there may be a core team of identifiable digital scholarship staff but there need to be clear roles and responsibilities for staff in all kinds of other areas and there need to be rewards for that participation. It has to be taken into account in annual reviews and in promotion and tenure decisions if that applies in your library. Creating a program for your institution that's really a lot of what this series has been about. Whether you're starting at the early stages or you're rethinking the next stage of your program I certainly encourage you to start with a needs assessment how extensive it is depends on what you already know about your audience, about other partners on campus, etc. But you need to know what are critical areas for your institution, both institutional priorities and where the gaps are in your institution. For example, I know of universities where the geography department has the GIS software but there's no place on campus where someone in a history can come and get expertise and access to technology for GIS that kind of thing, it's a gap. Importantly, you need to have clear discussions about how you'll address diversity, equity and inclusion issues throughout the digital scholarship program both in collections, in service, in priorities and in public programming. You need to think about what staff are available, how you'll retrain staff, how you'll repurpose positions when you're able to fill them. And I know that's a really worrisome area right now with the pandemic and where you should start. We had that question and we had some response to that. We might have more discussion at the end if you'd like. And then how will you know if you're successful? We do have a lot of assessment at the front end of the program but very little in midpoints and trying to develop some parameters and they don't necessarily mean metrics or numbers but some idea of what constitutes success for your program I think is really important to have those discussions and then to sit down and say each year, how did we do, where could we do better? How do we change our priorities and move forward? Now, space and place, while I do agree that having the right staff on board and enough staff is even more important than space and place, I still believe that space and place remain highly desirable as integral parts of programs and I'm not saying that our panelists disagree with that but most importantly, what we've seen during the pandemic with teaching and learning in particular is students miss community and in the digital scholarship, so much is done in collaboration and through communities and yes, there are many virtual digital scholarship communities and that can be part of it but we also know that so much peer learning and collaboration goes on in digital scholarship spaces. People build upon each other, they spark ideas and they teach each other things. In addition, those spaces often become windows often because they literally have glass walls into what libraries offer. So they serve as their own public relations and communications about what libraries do today and particularly if they offer exhibits of the products of digital scholarship both from faculty and students I think are critically important. So I want to remind you that this webinar series has the components of videos of each one of these sessions along with a brief campus discussion guide of three to five questions per segment and I'd really love it if you send me examples of how you might use these on your campus to do some planning discussions. You can ask members of your planning group to watch the videos asynchronously and then hold a Zoom session or in some of your cases an on-campus session where you discuss a particular aspect of the program whether you do it in sequence, whether you pick or choose it really doesn't matter but I would really hope that these help you in your own campus planning. You need to start thinking now I'm sure you already are thinking about reopening whether it's partial reopening or full reopening I don't mean most many of your libraries have some reopening right now but not so many have opened their digital scholarship spaces and use this time when you're partially open or closed to communicate with staff, your user community and new and current partners about what you're doing and what you would like to be doing with them. So that's really what I wanted to cover is my wrap up. I'd like you to please complete an evaluation form I'll send you a link to the evaluation form in an email this week. It doesn't matter if you've only come to one session or several or all of them I would really appreciate if you would complete the form also CNI is looking to that evaluation to see where they might go for future programs and please feel free to email me your comments and suggestions but most of all, I thank all the presenters our wonderful panelists today as well as presenters from our previous sessions and a big, big thank you to all of our participants. So I'm going to stop my screen share and then move back to the discussion I see we're beyond time at this point but if you have further questions I'll try to feed them to our panelists and once again, I thank you very much.