Faculty and the Next Generation Library

Faculty and students across campuses are engaged in fascinating research and data collection. Through a grant from Then Andrew W. Mellon Foundation the Five Colleges of Ohio we able to create unique collections that will be used directly in the liberal arts curriculum. It has been a common practice for faculty to be curators of local data to be used in the classroom. Rather than maintain resources and data on personal computers, librarians and library staff are actively engaged in crafting digital collections collaboratively with faculty and students.

 Digital collections benefit the academic and broader communities in several ways. First, the items are openly and freely accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection. This is a dramatic shift from the department-based collection. It also formalized field research that was previously done on an ad hoc basis. Contributors developed deeper understandings of data creation, ownership, and sharing information.

The Next Generation Libraries grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation allowed Libraries to develop human-centered collections that actively engaged faculty, students, and broader audiences.