A Model for Institutional Infrastructure to Support Digital Scholarship

Abstract

There is a driving imperative for new knowledge, approaches and technologies to empower scholarship, especially in emerging areas of inquiry. Sources of information now extend beyond the written word to include a wide range of born-digital objects. This paper examines the changing landscape in which digital scholars find, collaborate, create and process information and, as a result, scholarship is being transformed. It discusses the key elements required to build an institutional infrastructure, which will not only support new practices but also integrate scholarly literature into emerging and evolving models that generate true digital scholarship. The paper outlines some of the major impediments in implementing such a model, as well as suggestions on how to overcome these barriers.

Keywords

• digital scholarship
• built infrastructure
• digital artifacts
• scholarship