Public Knowledge Project: From Open Source to Community Source

Session Type: Presentation/Panel

Session Description:
Educational and research needs are changing rapidly: innovative teaching methods and collaborative learning environments generate an ever-increasing need for online resources; data sharing has become a requirement for many funding agencies and publishers; and the resulting information must now be archived and managed for the long-term. As this landscape changes, so too must libraries. In order to effectively respond to patrons’ needs, it is vital that libraries leverage resources to create collaborative, efficient and sustainable systems and services to support digital content management.

Cornell University Library (CUL) attempts to actively engage faculty and community members by providing services to facilitate the creation, access and preservation of digital content. Such services include repository ingest and curation, training and workshops, and ongoing consultations on a wide range of topics. These activities connect digital library, metadata and repository resources with faculty needs and awareness, regardless of discipline. In the humanities, CUL’s Digital Consulting and Production Services provides outreach and cross-campus consultative services to aid the creation, management and discoverability of community digital collections while often merging those collections with the general library resources. In the sciences, the Research Data Management Service Group is a cross-campus effort that provides access to a broad range of data management services, including support for sharing and dissemination of research results. Despite differing models, both service points fall within CUL’s organizational priorities as evidenced in the library’s strategic plan.

During the presentation, we will share our outreach methods, collaborative collection building environments, workflow, business models and general consultancy statistics. We also plan to discuss next steps for CUL’s services including expansion beyond the established subject-specific model to create an overall discovery environment. During the post-talk discussion, participants will be encouraged to discuss additional models and issues likely to be encountered when merging traditional and emerging services.

Session Leaders:
Jason Kovari, Cornell University Library
Wendy Kozlowski, Cornell University Library
Danielle Mericle, Cornell University Library

Session Notes:
View the community reporting Google doc for this session!

Session Slides: