A New Kind of Librarianship: Collaboratively Developing a New Approach to Library/STEM Digital Scholarship Initiatives

In this interactive presentation/discussion, we will discuss our recently-launched pilot project, which is a collaboration between the University of Delaware Library and the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department. The project, led by Discovery Services Librarian Molly Olney-Zide, focuses on strengthening relationships between the Library and STEM disciplines by meeting the needs of those faculty and graduate students rather than limiting itself to those services traditionally provided by the Library. In the earliest stages of this project, we have found that the more common approaches to digital scholarship do not translate especially well to engineering, so based on initial discussions, we are focusing on non-traditional methods such as librarians providing assistance to graduate students as they become familiar with the often-confusing and time-consuming manuscript submission process. That said, working closely with faculty and graduate students, Olney-Zide is working to help the project evolve as new needs and opportunities are discovered. We believe such a nimble approach is required to make “digital scholarship” relevant in STEM research. In this session, Olney-Zide and Dr. Joshua Zide, Associate Professor of MSE, will offer the perspectives of both a librarian and a faculty member on the project thus far. More essentially, we hope to launch a discussion amongst participants of both the challenges of traditional approaches and also new approaches to collaboratively developing new approaches to engaging STEM graduate student researchers and faculty