DURHAM, N.C. – The Duke University Libraries have received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support an annual Scholarly Communication Institute with the goal of advancing scholarship, teaching, and publishing in the humanities through the application of digital technologies.
Over the last two decades, rapid technological changes have fundamentally altered the way in which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. There has been lively debate among scholars, librarians, publishers, and technologists about the ways in which scholars share their research within the academic community and beyond. Duke has long been a vocal participant in these discussions and a strong advocate for the knowledge-sharing mission of research universities.
The Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) began as a Mellon-funded initiative at the University of Virginia in 2003 and was based there for nine years. Duke will host the new SCI, working in close collaboration with partners at the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central University, and the Triangle Research Libraries Network.
Like its predecessor program at UVA, the Triangle SCI will bring together a broad range of experts from inside and outside academia to discuss needs and opportunities in the domain of scholarly communications. The emphasis will be on productive dialogue across boundaries that often separate academic communities with an ultimate goal of fostering new types of collaboration and new models of scholarly dissemination.
“The goal of the SCI is not to schedule breakthroughs, but to create conditions that favor them,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke.
“It will bring diverse groups together and provide a combination of structured and unstructured time to brainstorm, organize, and jump-start ideas, to experiment and solve problems, and even begin to build,” she said. “This will be an opportunity both to talk and to do.”
Each annual institute will be organized under a broad theme. This year’s is “Scholarship and the Crowd.” It will be held November 9-13 at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Participants will be selected through a competitive proposal process. For the 2014 institute, applicants from the Triangle area are especially encouraged to submit. Proposals are being accepted through March 24. More information and application instructions are available at the institute’s website: trianglesci.org.