Summary Report of the Scholarly Assets Management Initial Exploratory Group

Abstract

DoIT's Academic Technology and the UW-Madison Library's Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing conducted discussion group meetings with invited participants representing a broad spectrum of faculty and administrative interests, focusing on digital asset management in the context of evolving technology-driven forms of scholarship, the reassessment of traditional dichotomies between pedagogy and research, and rising tension between central and distributed IT. Participant feedback provided insight into several problem areas, highlighting that attempts by DoIT to assist digital resource management must take into account problems with current institutional focus and resource allocation; that the loss of the culture of curatorship in the transition to a digital scholarly record severely threatens the preservation of institutional memory; and that adoption of solutions depends upon the implementation of trusted, comprehensive, interfederated identity management and access control. To address these concerns, DoIT should promote emerging open access paradigms in publication and the open data movement in research, collaborating with campus partners to provide encouragement and education in order to promote the growth of the new culture of digital curatorship. Further, DoIT should support emerging cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional social networks, providing liaison functions and facilitating coordination between potential partners, discovering opportunities for collaboration, and providing resources to seed their growth. This activity should take place in partnership with distributed IT staff, developing solutions and services that directly address the needs of their disciplinary areas, and Involving them directly through shared decision-making and collaborative work. Developed solutions should emphasize integration and interoperability as primary characteristics. Finally, DoIT should adopt open, standards-based identity management and access control mechanisms that support interfederation of credentials and access control policies.