From Martin Halbert

Academic libraries of the 21st century will provide innovative new services and collections vital to the intellectual life of the learning communities they serve. Such innovations are the driving force behind the sweeping changes now occurring throughout academia and society generally. Revolutionary new capabilities for research and communication are being provided by organized web content, search engines, and the enormous range of electronic services that have appeared within the last two decades.

The Future of Libraries

The digital production and management of information is central to the user services provided by university libraries, as well as to modern scholarship itself. Through digitization initiatives and the development of new tools and systems for information management, libraries are poised to play a pivotal role in the production of knowledge, replace university presses as disseminators of knowledge, and contribute to the internationalization of scholarship by building access to global resources. Emory seeks to advance this evolution through a variety of innovative services and projects that build on the Library’s traditional role as a meeting ground for scholars seeking to acquire, organize and produce knowledge. Instead of reducing human interaction, digital information systems can cultivate connections between people and foster their ability to understand and investigate. Indeed, digital innovations can provide fundamental new modes of communication which allow scholars to express themselves in powerful new ways. As part of this work, the Library, in collaboration with both internal and external partners, will promote the broad, equitable, and effective dissemination of the scholarship that is generated by the university community.

Steps toward this Vision

I have led a series of digital library initiatives at Emory University, attracting a steady stream of sponsored funding from private and public foundations for this work. I have been able to successfully construct an ongoing program in which projects build on prior accomplishments systematically. The following are highlights of these programmatic advances:

• Scholarly Portal Innovations (four projects funded by more than $1.6M from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation): These projects (Cyberinfrastructure for Scholars, MetaCombine, AmericanSouth, and first MetaArchive project) enabled Emory to build a broad foundation of knowledge, expertise, and recognition in the various aspects of creating scholarly communication portals based on metadata harvesting and automated organization of records. Emory worked collaboratively with more than two dozen other academic libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations in the course of these projects, and gained a reputation as a leader in this area.
• Digital Preservation Networks (more than $1.2M in funding from cooperative agreements with the Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program): The MetaArchive Cooperative Network is a multi-insitutional collaborative program for digital preservation of cultural heritage materials. It is one of the eight national collaborative centers of the NDIIP program operated by the Library of Congress, and will soon be expanding to international coverage in terms of participating institutions and content.
• Interdisciplinary Digital Scholarship (more than $324K in grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities): The TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database is a comprehensive resource provided searchable and analytic access to more than five centuries of slave trade voyages. It represents an integrated approach to interdicisplinary scholarship in the broad topic of forced intercontinental migration of African populations to the Americas.
• Digital Library Interoperation (more than $425K from the National Science Foundation): The OCKHAM Library Network was a project of the National Science Digital Library, and comprised experiments in inter-institutional digital library interoperation. It brought Emory into the NSDL community, and facilitated a new focus between Emory and collaborative allies on innovative approaches to collaborative cyberinfrastructure, which has since become a focus of the NSF as a whole.
• Collaborative Library Research (three projects funded for more than $254K from the Institute for Museum and Library Services): Emory has participated in several projects funded by the IMLS National Leadership Grants program, all of which have been focused on collaborative research with other libraries, museums, computer science departments, and cultural heritage organizations. These projects have enabled the Emory digital library program to broadly understand the process of conducting successful collaborative research, positioning Emory to act in leadership roles nationally and internationally.
• Institutional Repositories (approximately $100K in strategic funding from Emory University): Finally, the Emory Libraries have received initial funding to establish an institutional repository program. This work has led to the creation of an Electronic Thesis and Dissertations archiving program at Emory, providing the foundation for many IR enhancement projects in the future.