Vivian Lewis
University Librarian
McMaster University
Lisa Spiro
Executive Director, Digital Scholarship Services
Rice University
Xuemao Wang
Dean and University Librarian
University of Cincinnati
Jon E. Cawthorne
Dean of Libraries
West Virginia University
What skills, knowledge, competencies and mindsets are important to the practice of digital scholarship? How is this expertise best developed? Does the shape of this expertise vary around the world? This presentation will present key results from our pilot global benchmarking study on digital scholarship expertise, a planning grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. We visited leading digital humanities and digital social science organizations in the United Kingdom, Germany, China, India, Taiwan, Mexico, the United States and Canada, conducting interviews with research staff, faculty, graduate students, and administrators in order to understand the core skills required for digital scholarship and the characteristics of organizations that cultivate these skills. Our study demonstrated the importance of collaborative competencies and learning mindsets as well as technical skills, domain knowledge, methodological competencies, and management skills. In addition, we observed that most digital scholars–particularly more senior ones–acquired their expertise through self-education, but that they also benefit from belonging to lively communities of practice. While our study did not include enough sites to allow us to generalize about the similarities and differences between digital scholarship organizations around the world, we did note the significance of factors such as funding, history, and career structures in informing the shape of digital scholarship expertise in local contexts.