Assessing Campus Needs for Digital Scholarship Program Development
Aaron Brenner is the Associate University Librarian for Digital Scholarship and Creation in the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh. He works to develop the library’s expertise in advanced digital technologies, methods, and services in support of research and scholarship. His areas of focus within the library include data acquisition and analysis, research data management, geographic information systems, Open Access library publishing, copyright guidance, digital repository services, the creation and use of digital research collections, scholarly and digital making, and multimedia technologies. Prior to his current role, Aaron worked for over a decade on digital library initiatives at Pitt. He has also taught courses at a variety of levels at the university, including for undergraduates in a First Experiences in Research program; for master’s students in the Library and Information Science degree program; and for doctoral students in a Digital Studies and Methods certificate program.
Creating a Framework for Ongoing Assessment of Digital Scholarship Support
Meris Mandernach Longmeier is the head of Research Services at The Ohio State University 
Libraries. In this role she develops services for OSU Libraries to support the research endeavors of all faculty, staff, and students at Ohio State. Longmeier sets the vision and oversees the services provided through the Libraries’ Research Commons (https://library.osu.edu/researchcommons/). She supports subject librarians, special collections curators, and other faculty and staff in the libraries to anticipate user needs and brainstorm programs to benefit their research. Her research portfolio examines assessment of research services, the evolving relationships between library services and users, hackathon and other informal learning experiences, and liaison development. She earned her Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds an additional degree from the College of Wooster.
Slides Research Commons Logic Model
Campus Discussion Questions
These questions are intended for use by committees, task forces, and planning groups that are considering a digital scholarship program, re-thinking an existing digital scholarship program, or augmenting an existing program. Individuals in the group can watch the recording of a webinar and then discuss these questions as a group. A set of questions will be available for each webinar.
- Have you done a needs assessment for your digital scholarship program? If not, how might you go about it during the pandemic? If you have done a needs assessment in the past, is it time to repeat it or to do a needs assessment targeting a particular population, e.g. graduate students, or discipline?
- Are you aware of the scope of programs and services across your institution, such a makerspaces, GIS centers, etc. that offer digital scholarship services? Would library/IT services complement those offerings or compete with them? If they exist elsewhere, would the other unit be open to partnership?
- Do you have criteria for what constitutes success for your digital scholarship program? Can you explicitly state some desired outcomes and then describe how you would gather and analyze data related to those aspects of the program?