Abstract

Over the past decade, the University Libraries' Digital Collections have grown from an assemblage of discrete projects into two distinct programs that curate, manage, and publish digitized and born-digital materials online for educational and scholarly uses by Grand Valley State University's community and the wider public.

As these collections have grown, the support for creating, sharing, and preserving these materials has expanded from the Special Collections & University Archives into Systems and Technology Services, Knowledge Access and Resource Management Services, and Scholarly Communications, which manages the Libraries' other Digital Collection program, consisting of the Institutional Repository (IR) and a suite of library publishing services.

While cross-departmental collaborations have been fruitful, the library staff and faculty responsible for these separate Digital Collection programs are exploring structural evolution that will unify their parallel efforts in order to support a more holistic Digital Collections program that is sustainable and effective into the future.

This report summarizes the findings of the group's inquiry, which included reviews of the tasks, skills, and operations of the team, a review of digital collection programs at peer institutions, and review of aspirational digital collection programs. It includes recommendations for moving forward, near future next steps, and opportunities and challenges to consider as we progress.

Keywords

reorganization, library organization, change management, digital libraries, archives, digital curation, appreciative inquiry

Disciplines

Archival Science | Library and Information Science | Scholarly Communication | Scholarly Publishing

Document Type

Article

Comments

Additional contributors included: Robert Beasecker, Jeffrey Daniels, Kyle Felker, Alicia Huber, Diana Page, and Patrick Roth.

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