Two decades after the advent of the Web, digital collections are a regular part of academic library business. This seminar’s leaders reviewed some new approaches to digital collections taken by libraries at small colleges. In particular, they discussed collections developed around faculty teaching and research interests, student-created collections and exhibits, library publishing programs, and library support for digital field scholarship. In this seminar, Mark Dahl, NITLE fellow and director of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College, and panelists Mark Christel, director of libraries at the College of Wooster, Anneliese Dehner, digital projects developer at Lewis & Clark, Isaac Gilman, assistant professor and scholarly communications and research services librarian at Pacific University, and Allegra Swift, head of scholarly communications and publishing for the Claremont Colleges Library, as they delve into new directions for digital collections. These slides are from Mark Christel's presentation.

1. New Directions for Digital
Collections at Academic Libraries
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Mark Christel
Director of Libraries, College of Wooster
&
Project Director of the Five Colleges of Ohio’s current
Mellon grant focused on Digital Scholarship

2. Why am I here???

3. A Tale of Two Grants
(and how our thinking has evolved)
Next Steps in the Next Generation Library:
Integrating Digital Collections into the Liberal
Arts Curriculum (awarded Jan. 2010 – 3 years)
http://www.ohio5.org/portal/
Digital Collections: from Projects to Pedagogy
and Scholarship
http://digitalscholarship.ohio5.org/

4. The Five Colleges of Ohio
• Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio
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•
•
•
•
Wesleyan, and The College of Wooster
Consortium created in 1995
58 librarians & 74 library staff
Over $18,000,000 annual library budget
Serving 1,000+ faculty and nearly 11,000
undergraduate students
All OhioLINK members (early importance
of the DRC/DSpace)

5. Insert standard disclaimers, fine
print and caveats here . . .

6. Highlights
• 50 curricular digital collections
• 5 institutional repositories & two open access
resolutions
• Development of a very effective, collaborative
network to support digital projects
• Numerous staff development opportunities
• Faculty, student, and librarians presentations

8. Goals of the Original Mellon Grant
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Establish a curriculum development program in
which librarians will partner with faculty to identify,
build, and integrate digital collections into their
courses;
Enhance access to our institutional scholarship;
Initiate a professional development program for
library staff;
Develop a shared digital infrastructure to support
new initiatives; and
Create the Five Colleges of Ohio Digital Collections
Portal.

9. Evolution of Goal #1
Establish a curriculum development program in
which librarians will partner with faculty to
identify, build, and integrate digital collections
into their courses
Continued development of curriculum-driven
digital collections in partnership with students
and faculty while expanding the scope of the
projects whenever possible to include digital
scholarship practices

10. Evolution of Goal #2
Enhance access to our institutional
scholarship
Additional efforts to capture and provide
open access to student and faculty
scholarship

11. Evolution of Goal #3
Initiate a professional development program for
library staff
Continued professional staff development and
collaboration across the Ohio Five library
organizations to best support the needs of our
faculty

12. Evolution of Goal #4
Develop a shared digital infrastructure to support
new initiatives
Hire a digital scholar who will leverage
development of our new collections, support
digital scholarship efforts, and engage our
campus communities in related considerations of
pedagogy

13. Evolution of Goal #5
Create the Five Colleges of Ohio Digital Collections
Portal
(if we build it, they will come . . .)
Create new collaborations with similar institutions,
particularly those focused upon the digital
humanities, and broadly disseminate the products
and processes developed under the grant
(hey, maybe we could build something together?)

14. Summary of our current approach
• More interested in the learning that happens
during the process
• More collaborative, particularly in the early
planning stages – library, IT, faculty, etc.
• More conscious of necessity to approach this as a
team – specializations, defined roles
• Looking more broadly, seeing how our projects
and content might partner with other initiatives
• Role of libraries in the digital liberal arts

15. Some examples of our early
projects (if time allows!)

16. Photo: Creative Commons

17. History of Fashion (Denison
University)
350+ garments from 1830-20th
Cent.
Costume Design & History of
Fashion courses
Medieval Manuscripts (Kenyon
College)
Exhibit & student presentations

18. Baist’s Real Estate Atlases of Columbus, OH
(Ohio Wesleyan University)
Combines detailed historic atlas scans with
contemporary maps (“geo-rectified” maps)
Next step? Perhaps developing an app so
students can access the data and contribute new
content in the field.

19. GIS-based Photographic Archive (College of
Wooster)
Digital file cabinet
Active field work
Cameras in trees!
Coming soon: Attack of the drones . . .
See a video about the project

20. King-Crane Commission Digital Collection
(Oberlin College)
Delegation appointed by President Woodrow
Wilson to visit the former Ottoman territories
following the First World War
Papers at Stanford, Library of Congress, Boston
University, and Oberlin – virtually re-united
750+ items

21. Senior Independent Study Theses (College of
Wooster)
5,400 undergraduate theses – working toward
over 20,000
Small number will become openly accessible each
year

22. If you’re thirsty for more . . .
• See the complete “Lightning Talks” YouTube
video (running nearly 2 hours!) of nearly all 50
collections