Digital Scholarship at Robarts Library: Redesigning the 5th Floor
Robarts Library is redesigning its fifth floor into an innovative space for digital scholarship. By delivering a series of student and staff feedback sessions, the Innovation Hub explored how students and staff use and experience library spaces for digital scholarship, including the Map and Data Library, digital humanities, and more. Insights generated from the feedback were used during the design process of the new library space at Robarts Library in order to ensure everyone’s needs are met. This is the Innovation Hub’s second project with U of T Libraries, following the redesign of Robarts’ fourth floor study space.
Summer 2022
How can we develop a destination for innovative data research and digital scholarship?
As part of the University of Toronto (U of T) Libraries’ vision, Robarts Library’s fifth floor is slated for renovation into an upgraded digital consultation and study space. The upgrade will involve the current Map and Data Library (MDL) and the Government Documentation collection while presenting potential new opportunities. Accordingly, U of T Libraries approached the Innovation Hub in early 2022 to discover stakeholder needs and collect feedback that will be critical to developing a destination for innovative data research and digital scholarship.
KEY FINDINGS
The future of the Robarts Library fifth floor celebrates the novelty of a digital era in an academic world
We found that students, faculty and staff are doing groundbreaking research and work in their respective fields of study using digital tools. This growing community wants to come together to share ideas and redefine how the digital world can be recognized in an academic context. The Robarts fifth floor is well positioned to be a place that unites and empowers digital scholars in a vibrant community and offers the most current digital tools to its users.
Our findings play out in five themes:
- Charting an Identity
- Dialogue as Scholarship
- Getting Work Done
- Navigating Complexity in New Ways
- To Be Inspired
Robarts fifth floor redesign will need to accommodate the transdisciplinary and rapidly evolving nature of digital scholarship to meet the needs of its users. The redesign will empower users of the fifth floor to pursue the nontraditional areas of research they work in and inspire both early-career researchers and those with more experience to innovate.
Charting an Identity: Many students and faculty who identify as researching the digital humanities felt that their research is insufficiently acknowledged as academic work because it often does not look like traditional academic work
Dialogue as Scholarship: Participants emphasized that when colleagues, researchers, students, and digital experts come together on a level playing field, they can foster environments to promote innovative research.
Getting Work Done: Students shared that they need more intensive support from experts that can guide them with their projects that differs from traditional methods of research.
Navigating Complexities in New Ways: With technology constantly evolving, staff and faculty expressed their need to have access to the newest tools and resources.
To Be Inspired: Interviewees voiced desires of having an environment that inspires and motivates them to complete their academic work.