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About Us

VR headset and plants

Digital Scholarship at UCSC

About Us

The University Library Center for Digital Scholarship offer two related spaces for digital experimentation and creation: the Digital Scholarship Commons in McHenry Library and the Digital Scholarship Innovation Studio in Science and Engineering. Our team consists of 3 librarians, 1 associate, and a varying number of student employees. Our full time staff come from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds, and we hire students from all academic divisions. To learn more about who we we are, check out the tab to the left! To learn more about what we stand for, continue reading below! 

Values

Curiosity—To encourage people to try new things that interest them.

Conversation—To engage in collaborative work and incorporate multiple perspectives.

Experimentation—To be comfortable with learning through trying and recognize the value of iterative learning. 

Goals

Provide access to hardware and software that enable new modes of knowledge building
We are advocates for using digital technologies in ways that allow students, faculty, and researchers to explore their subjects in new and meaningful ways.  This exploration can lead to new ways of understanding information.  Our goal is to provide access to these modes of knowledge by providing checkout equipment, maintaining the digital scholarship computers with related software, and offering skills based workshops and consultations to help aspiring digital scholars.

Democratizing access to technology
Both the David Kirk Digital Scholarship Commons and the Digital Innovation studio provide access to equipment free of use.  As we grow and expand, we are committed to continuing free and low cost solutions.  We recognize that learning new technologies can be costly both to access the equipment as well as the use of consumable materials used during the learning process for activities like 3D printing.  Additionally, not all students come with the same level of knowledge about equipment.  Through our workshop series, we aim to provide various levels of instruction and modes of learning to meet students and instructors at their level of knowledge and comfort.  In our spaces, we strive to provide a judgement free learning zone with access to knowledgeable peers available for support at every step of the way.  We are always striving to improve these efforts, and welcome your feedback at digitalcommons@ucsc.edu.

Create opportunities for students to integrate digital tools into their learning
We are always on the lookout for opportunities to build campus partnerships with the goal of supporting digital scholarship learning opportunities for students.  We work with faculty on individual assignments, offer our own workshops, and collaborate with campus groups including FITC, CITL, Online Education, Koret, and others.  

Create opportunities for students to learn through Critical Making
Critical making is the process of iterative learning through hands-on making and conceptual exploration.  We recognize that the technologies in our Digital Scholarship Innovation Studio are suited to this type of learning.  Our DSI student assistants are trained to help at every step of the process and to engage in troubleshooting steps with students in the space.  As we grow our programming, we aim to incorporate specific opportunities and programs that integrate Critical Making.

Build partnerships with UCSC faculty and staff to facilitate digital research 
We recognize that digital scholarship is often the product of successful collaborations. Partnerships of this nature benefit all of our communities by supporting faculty research projects and keeping our own technical and research related skills up to date.  These projects position us to provide more informed consultations for students and researchers.  Where we are able to collaborate with community partners, we are able to learn more about community needs and to be more engaged with the larger public.

Develop and maintain spaces that foster experimentation and innovation
Our spaces provide not only access to the technologies that allow our work to be done, but also room to engage with the technologies and methods that we support.  As we continue to review and update our program each year, our goal is to make sure those spaces are maintained in ways that reflect the needs of our campus community in the realm of digital scholarship.