2015 Charleston Library Conference

This session will introduce two Mellon Foundation-funded projects designed to break new ground in the discoverability and linking of humanities texts and to create iterative editions of scholarly works that will evolve alongside the scholarship itself. Panelists will announce the UPScope Project, a university press-wide discovery engine based on natural language searches being developed in conjunction with the Association of American University Presses. The goal is for the bulk of university press content to be discoverable (with various options for access, purchase, and more) in one place. Since the system will be built on a natural language search, the platform will link humanities texts across disciplines in ways not before available and facilitate a richer and more meaningful research experience. The project lead for the University of Minnesota/CUNY's GC Digital Scholarship Lab’s Manifold Scholarship will also detail their project’s vision for digital scholarly works that move beyond the static replication of the print book. From the beginning, the scholarship will be dynamic, revised, and expanded to reflect the evolution of academic thought and research, incorporating access to primary research documents and data, links to related archives, rich media, social media, and reading tools.

Helen Cullyer from the Mellon Foundation and two librarians will respond to the vision of these projects and discuss how such initiatives can evolve in order to be most useful to students, scholars, and libraries. The panelists will participate in a lively conversation about how these initiatives will develop important research/discoverability/resources for faculty and what factors are involved in building shared value between university presses, campuses, and libraries as we build meaningful initiatives for a 21st century university.