Patricia Hswe

Responding to the Call to Curate: Digital Curation in Practice at Penn State University Libraries

This paper describes how the Pennsylvania State (Penn State) University Libraries and the university’s central information technology organization, Information Technology Services, are putting into practice key tenets of digital curation through the newly established Content Stewardship program, a joint strategic initiative to implement stewardship services for the university. First, we provide an account of the planning, preparation, and prototyping that informed the initial year of the program. Second, we report on the hiring of a Digital Collections Curator and a Digital Library Architect and how they are advancing the program by putting digital curation into practice, which includes the work of community building. Finally, we address the organizational context of curation in practice, in particular with respect to the challenges of starting and sustaining a stewardship services program for all of Penn State.

Building professional development opportunities in data services for academic librarians

Research data management represents a significant professional development area for academic librarians – significant for its growing importance to the profession, since researchers are increasingly expected to comply with research data management requirements, and for the extent of competence needed by librarians to support researchers in research data management practices and plans. This article recounts how the Association of College and Research Libraries is fostering professional development opportunities in research data management. The authors describe two key endeavors: (1) the development and deployment of a needs assessment survey, which allowed insight into the types of librarians expressing the most need; and (2) planning and implementation of a pre-conference workshop for ACRL 2015, intended to prototype a future professional development offering. The article concludes by discussing additional assessment that was done following the workshop and how the pre-conference laid the foundation for proposing a “roadshow” for research data management, similar to what the Association of College and Research Libraries sponsors for scholarly communication.

Digitizing the Zdenka and Stanley B. Winters Collection of Czech and Slovak Posters, 1920–1991

SUMMARY Donated to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1990s, the Zdenka and Stanley B. Winters Collection of Czech and Slovak Posters, 1920–1991, consists of nearly 500 posters that address a range of subjects, including architecture, art, folklore, literature, music, nature, politics, sports, technology, theater, and tourism. This paper describes a project by UIUCs Slavic and East European Library to digitize the collection. It provides some background about the posters and details the steps taken toward making them more accessible via their digital images.