RLG Programs 2008 Annual Partners Meeting
Supporting New Modes of Scholarship Breakout Session Summary

June 2-3, 2008

Background Provided in Advance of Meeting

The goal of this part of the work agenda is to engage the RLG partnership in reaching a collective understanding of their responsibilities and opportunities in a changed research support infrastructure. The first area of activity is a study aimed at facilitating access to collections from libraries, archives and museums across a single campus or institution. A second activity now underway is a synthesis of the literature on disciplinary research behaviors in the online environment; it will likely lead to an assessment of interest from partner institutions in supporting and preserving personal research collections. A third activity not yet launched is an investigation of user expectations for scholarly use of the outputs of book digitization. A new initiative, which will draw heavily on our European partners, will explore the library's role in how a campus's research outputs are developed, delivered and preserved. The particular focus will be on institutional reputation arising from these research outputs in assessment contexts. These efforts will help research institutions as they seek new ways to add value to the endeavors of those they serve.

Brief Summary of Breakout Discussion

At the RLG Programs Annual Partners Meeting, the New Modes of Scholarship breakout group discussed the work agenda in this area and prioritized the following projects:

• A follow-on forum to the LAM workshops which would extend the benefit and lessons from the individual institution investigations
• An initiative that would formulate guidance for those interested in managing personal collections
• A working group to write a scoping and opportunity paper on reputation and expertise profiling
• A working group to profile a suite of services that could be built around faculty workflow and research output
• Other topics discussed included scholarship in text aggregations (where there was much work going on elsewhere), single search (addressed by the New Service Infrastructure group), eScience (coordinate with work underway by ARL taskforce), and ensuring that partners and other initiatives are aware of related work underway in Research and in OCLC services.

Additional Information

• List of participants
• Partner Presentation: Amplification Call to Action by Ross Coleman, Director of Sydney eScholarship, University of Sydney Library (.pdf: 144K/5 pp.)
• Partner Presentation: Digital Lives Research Project by John Tuck, Head of British Collections at British Library (.pdf: 96K/16 pp.)
• Breakout session recap sent to participants