Abstract
Some of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries’ largest investments are in collections, digital library development, and technology‐rich collaborative spaces. The goal of the NCSU Libraries Fellows Program initiative, "Aligning Collections with Emerging Needs in Research Informatics," is to ensure these areas leverage one another to the benefit of our users in support of emerging research informatics needs through licensing and acquisition of new data sources, as well as leveraging the capabilities of new high‐tech library spaces. Over its two years, this initiative seeks to address and mainstream subject specialists’ and selectors’ consideration of high‐tech research informatics needs of users.
Early accomplishments of the initiative include content mining agreements, increased awareness of scholarly APIs, and an ontology to describe research informatics. Ongoing work includes an investigation of relevant collections, licensing terms, and the landscape of the current marketplace; an environmental scan of NCSU research and teaching contexts that would benefit from greater availability of content as data for computational purposes; how‐to documentation and training for more technologically sophisticated uses of existing resources; negotiations of select licenses to allow for more flexibility of content use; and revision of our website to promote the research informatics capacities of the Libraries’ collections to our users.
Aligning Collections With Emerging Needs in Research Informatics
Some of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries’ largest investments are in collections, digital library development, and technology‐rich collaborative spaces. The goal of the NCSU Libraries Fellows Program initiative, "Aligning Collections with Emerging Needs in Research Informatics," is to ensure these areas leverage one another to the benefit of our users in support of emerging research informatics needs through licensing and acquisition of new data sources, as well as leveraging the capabilities of new high‐tech library spaces. Over its two years, this initiative seeks to address and mainstream subject specialists’ and selectors’ consideration of high‐tech research informatics needs of users.
Early accomplishments of the initiative include content mining agreements, increased awareness of scholarly APIs, and an ontology to describe research informatics. Ongoing work includes an investigation of relevant collections, licensing terms, and the landscape of the current marketplace; an environmental scan of NCSU research and teaching contexts that would benefit from greater availability of content as data for computational purposes; how‐to documentation and training for more technologically sophisticated uses of existing resources; negotiations of select licenses to allow for more flexibility of content use; and revision of our website to promote the research informatics capacities of the Libraries’ collections to our users.