2020 LibTech Conference

Macalester College is one of many institutions seeing an increase in demand for the support of digital scholarly and curricular projects. This activity is, in part, attributable to grant-funded digital initiatives, such as the Digital Liberal Arts program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These grants provide incredible opportunities to develop new materials, but project managers and collaborators face the inevitable challenge of maintaining (or not) their work beyond the duration of the grant. In addition, these types of projects often have multiple stakeholders.

While the DLA initiative at Macalester funds a postdoctoral fellow for the full length of the grant, it also requires the energy and expertise of librarians and academic information associates. In an effort to form a more sustainable infrastructure of support for digital projects, and one that carefully considers the time invested by collaborators, the Digital Liberal Arts working group is endeavoring to create a replicable workflow. In this session, the DLA postdoctoral fellow, librarians and AIAs from Macalester will host a conversation about elements of a project workflow (from project scope through to stewardship), asking attendees to provide their own feedback on experiences with different phases of development. The Macalester DLA group is in the process of creating a living document offering suggestions on workflow and linking to resources from other institutions. It is by no means a complete or comprehensive document, but an ongoing effort to increase transparency and support for collaborators.