Personal Scholarly Archiving: Studying Faculty’s Information Workflow

Session Type: Research/Project Update

Session Description:
This research update will detail and discuss the preliminary qualitative data findings of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded, Penn State University-based study of faculty’s scholarly personal libraries and personal archiving. This study delves into the personal online scholarly workflow of faculty across disciplines encompassing the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, including history, education, and the physical sciences. The study builds on previous research in the area of scholarly personal information management and personal archiving, aiming to expand findings beyond the realm of the humanities, identifying and mapping scholars’ needs across a wider range of academic disciplines.

The project, funded by the Mellon Foundation through Spring, 2013, is an ethnographic study of faculty behaviors and articulated needs central to robust scholarly creation and successful navigation of the personal archiving and information management process. The study will lead to recommended design principles for archival and discovery interfaces, as well as identification of critical digital and information literacies for faculty management of personal, scholarly libraries. The study will also reveal recommended practices for public services librarians and archivists supporting faculty’s scholarly archiving and personal information management needs. Attendees will learn about the scope and focus of the study, will discuss preliminary findings, and will have the opportunity to ask questions and share community insights with the project’s researchers, with regard to initial project discoveries and next steps.

Session Leaders:
Smiljana Antonijevic, Penn State University Libraries
Ellysa Stern Cahoy, Penn State University Libraries
Ben Goldman, Penn State University Libraries

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

Session Slides: