The Digital Scholar

This book delves into the changes in technology regarding higher education and seeks to define what it means to be a scholar in the digital age.

What does it take to become a digitally agile scholar? This manual explains how academics can comfortably navigate the digital world of today and tomorrow. It foregrounds three key domains of digital agility: getting involved in research, education and (community) service, mobilising (digital) skills on various levels, and acting in multiple roles, both individually and interlinked with others. After an introduction that outlines the foundations of the three-dimensional framework, the chapters focus on different roles and skills associated with evolving as a digital scholar. There is the author, who writes highly specialised texts for expert peers; the storyteller, who crafts accessible narratives to a broader audience in the form of blogs or podcasts; the creator, who uses graphics, audio, and video to motivate audiences to delve deeper into the material; the integrator, who develops and curates multimedia artefacts, disseminating them through channels such as websites, webinars, and open source repositories; and finally the networker, who actively triggers interaction via social media applications and online learning communities. Additionally, the final chapters offer a blueprint for the future digital scholar as a professional learner and as a “change agent” who is open to and actively pursues innovation. Informed by the authors’ broad and diverse personal experience, Evolving as a Digital Scholar offers insight, inspiration, and practical advice. It equips a broad readership with the skills and the mindset to harness new digital developments and navigate the ever-evolving digital age. It will inspire academic teachers and researchers with different backgrounds and levels of knowledge that wish to enhance their digital academic profile.

The forms and genres of academic communication have changed considerably over the past decades – from standardised ways of producing texts on/for paper to a (less?) standardised way of communication in Web 2.0. Published papers are now available to a greater number of readers, interaction among colleagues can take place in real time via written, audio or visual formats, and it has become much more comfortable for students as well as for those outside the scientific community to access academic information and to contact its authors. It seems, however, that many aspects of academic communication have not yet changed, and its participants – either in the „old“ or in the „new“ generation – are ill-equipped to work within the multimedia context. This volume, therefore, takes a look at academic communication in the multimedia environment, in order to throw light on how these processes are linked to new multimedia affordances, while at the same time encapsulating old genre conventions and participant interaction with the medium.

To receive tenure college and university professors have long been required to write scholarly monographs or articles, engage in serious research, and teach effectively. In recent years, however, the emergence of digital scholarship has revolutionized - and complicated - the picture in unexpected ways as new electronic media have enabled academics to communicate scholarly material in innovative formats such as websites, PowerPoint presentations, CD-ROMs, and virtual reality "tours." Despite this growing output of sophisticated digital scholarship, there has been little attempt to set standards, define basic issues and concepts, or integrate electronic scholarship into the tenure debate. This collection of cutting-edge articles marks the first effort to evaluate the place of digital scholarship in the tenure, promotion, and review process. As a primer aimed at scholars, faculty members, and department chairs in the humanities, social sciences, and other fields, as well as deans, provosts, and university administrators, this collection examines the evolution of nontraditional scholarship, analyzes the various formats, and suggests guidelines for assessment on a scholarly level. It also examines the impact of digital scholarship in the classroom and academy and explores new directions for the future. This book will help shape policy in the murky world of tenure review and could become a central text for scholars and administrators everywhere.

This book provides strategic insights drawn from librarians who are meeting the challenge of digital scholarship, utilizing the latest technologies and creating new knowledge in partnership with researchers, scholars, colleagues and students. The impact of digital on libraries has extended far beyond its transformation of content, to the development of services, the extension and enhancement of access to research and to teaching and learning systems. As a result,the fluidity of the digital environment can often be at odds with the more systematic approaches to development traditionally taken by academic libraries, which has also led to a new generation of roles and shifting responsibilities with staff training and development often playing ‘catch-up’. One of the key challenges to emerge is how best to demonstrate expertise in digital scholarship which draws on the specialist technical knowledge of the profession and maintains and grows its relevance for staff, students and researchers. This edited collection spans a wide range of contrasting perspectives, contexts, insights and case studies, which explore the relationships between digital scholarship, contemporary academic libraries and professional practice. The book demonstrates that there are opportunities to be bold, remodel, trial new approaches and reposition the library as a key partner in the process of digital scholarship. Content covered includes: • the impact of digital scholarship on organizational strategies • an insight into new services and roles, partnerships and collaborations • case studies exploring new technologies to support research and development • new approaches to service delivery • re-visioning of space, physical and virtual. This is an essential guide for librarians and information professionals involved in digital scholarship and communication, who wish to extend their awareness of emerging practices, as well as library administrators and students studying library and information science.

Amy E. Earhart is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Texas A & M University.

Digital scholarship is the incorporation of computational techniques and digital tools to traditional scholarly research. Digital scholarship has shown great potential for transforming humanities studies, and humanities researchers have long used computer technology to support their work. However, the application of computational techniques is far less common. Applying computational techniques would enable humanists to solve problems that historically have been too difficult. Archivists can now consider ways to allow researchers access to rare materials, and Librarians can provide personalized help and recommendations for subjects they themselves may not be familiar with. Digital Scholarship provides a brief grounding in the history of digital scholarship by introducing several of the main areas in which digital techniques can enhance scholarly information processing. Subsequent chapters cover metadata and issues of born-digital artefacts. The remaining chapters move on to text analytics, analyzing information and conclude with social issues of digital scholarship. Provide readers a grounding in the history and theory of digital scholarship using the humanities as an area of focus Instruct readers on the use of common tools for collection processing, collection presentation, and collection analysis Combines the discussion on a range of topics with practical tutorials and sample projects to help readers understand both the theory and practice of digital scholarship so that they may apply it to their own work