1 Digital Scholarship at Harvard: Current Practices, Opportunities, and Ways Forward A Report Prepared by Sarah Kalikman Lippincott for the Harvard Library Submitted June 27, 2017 2 Contents I. Executive Summary ......................................................................... 6 Background ........................................................................................................6 Findings ..............................................................................................................6 Recommendations .............................................................................................7 II. External Scan and Benchmarking ...................................................... 8 Introduction ........................................................................................................8 Scholars’ Needs ..................................................................................................8 Library Offerings .................................................................................................9 Conceptualizing the Service Model .................................................................11 Service or Lab? .................................................................................................................................... 11 Degrees of Capacity ........................................................................................................................... 12 Service Hierarchy ................................................................................................................................ 13 Services and the Research Lifecycle ............................................................................................... 13 Staffing and Organization ................................................................................15 Professional Librarians ..................................................................................................................... 15 Faculty Members ................................................................................................................................ 15 Paraprofessionals and Technologists ............................................................................................ 16 Postdocs and Students ...................................................................................................................... 16 Reporting Lines ................................................................................................................................... 16 Skills and Responsibilities................................................................................................................. 16 Professional Development and Cross-Training ..............................................18 Digital Competencies and Skills ...................................................................................................... 18 Position Description Frameworks ................................................................................................... 20 Reskilling and Cross-Training .......................................................................................................... 21 Case Studies and Site Visits .............................................................................22 Yale DHLab .......................................................................................................................................... 22 Northeastern University NULab & Digital Scholarship Group (DSG) ........................................ 26 Temple University Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) ................................................................... 30 Additional Case Studies and Planning Documents ........................................33 University of Colorado Boulder ....................................................................................................... 33 Case Western Reserve University .................................................................................................... 33 University of Houston ........................................................................................................................ 33 University of Pittsburgh ..................................................................................................................... 33 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ...................................................................................... 33 ARL Digital Scholarship Support Profiles ....................................................................................... 33 IV. Internal Context and Existing Services .............................................34 Relevant Campus and Library Services ...........................................................34 V. Campus Digital Scholarship Practices and Needs Assessment ................36 Introduction ......................................................................................................36 Digital Scholarship Practices of Harvard Faculty Members ...........................36 Corpus creation and management (including database development) ............................... 36 Data analysis and visualization ...................................................................................................... 37 GIS and mapping ................................................................................................................................ 37 Annotation ........................................................................................................................................... 37 Digital publishing and online exhibits............................................................................................ 38 3 Multimedia content creation and analysis ................................................................................... 38 Text mining, analysis, and markup ................................................................................................. 38 Coding, web and software development ...................................................................................... 38 Digital pedagogy ............................................................................................................................... 38 Unmet Needs and Desired Services ................................................................41 Consultation and Advisory................................................................................................................ 41 Training, Workshops, and Bootcamps ........................................................................................... 42 Community .......................................................................................................................................... 43 Digital preservation and curation ................................................................................................... 44 Hosting, storage, and sandbox space ............................................................................................ 44 Physical spaces and equipment ..................................................................................................... 45 Other Challenges and Barriers .........................................................................46 Skepticism about digital scholarship ............................................................................................. 46 Time and competing priorities ........................................................................................................ 46 Navigating support networks .......................................................................................................... 46 Funding and sustainability ............................................................................................................... 46 Web Survey Findings: Aggregate Results ........................................................51 Survey Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 51 Demographics ..................................................................................................................................... 51 Digital Scholarship Adoption & Practices ...................................................................................... 51 Barriers ................................................................................................................................................ 52 Current and Desired Support ........................................................................................................... 52 Web Survey Findings: Results by Department ................................................53 Demographics ..................................................................................................................................... 53 Digital Scholarship Adoption & Practices ...................................................................................... 53 Departmental Support ...................................................................................................................... 54 Desired Support .................................................................................................................................. 54 V. Recommendations .........................................................................55 Goals and Outcomes Resulting from Library Action ......................................55