Better together: the ESRC in the university research library of the twenty-first century^*

* This paper has been double-blind peer reviewed to meet the Department of Higher Education’s Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) requirements.

Abstract

This article describes the role of the University of Melbourne Library in relation to the roles and services provided by the eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC): how this relationship was established and how it is currently being maintained. Drawing primarily on the findings of the 2015 academic review of the Centre, the article also demonstrates how, within the changing information management environment, the ESRC provides immense value as a resource for the University and the research sector more generally. The article concludes by describing how, going forward, the recommendations from the review will strengthen the relationship between the ESRC and Library, and within the context of the growing field of digital humanities this relationship will help to position the University of Melbourne at the forefront of social and cultural informatics practice and knowledge infrastructure development.

Keywords:

• Digital scholarship
• knowledge archiving
• digital humanities
• informatics
• library
• research support

Introduction

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. (Henry Ford)

Research, scholarly communication and practice have been transformed in the last 20 years. The technology environment has undergone constant and rapid change, with the only certainty about the future being that this change will continue. The opportunities in digital research and scholarship are coupled with new challenges for the research community faced with managing a deluge of data and an array of options for managing, disseminating and sharing their work. Scholars still require and use the expertise provided by libraries to facilitate access to and discovery of information, but are increasingly seeking support. For example, they seek support in using computational methods to do their research, advice on publication of that research in a form that allows readers to engage with it in an interactive form in the long term, and support using a digital information infrastructure that will ensure the preservation of research outputs for future discovery and reuse.

A decade ago, the University of Melbourne was deeply embedded in the era of e-scholarship. This provided both challenges and even greater opportunities for collaboration and the creation of new knowledge. Issues of sustainability, persistence, traceability and interconnection required the development of appropriate technologies and the evolution of academic practices. Globally, e-research and the changing nature of research practice required an evolution of services and support from all research libraries. Research information management support emerged in the form of research data management and bibliometric services, to sit side by side with more traditional offerings from the library. It was clear that leadership from information professionals and considered innovation through research would be the major means that would lead to sustainable scholarly communication practices in the digital world.

This article explores the role of the University of Melbourne Library in relation to the roles and services provided by the eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC): how the relationship was established and how it is currently being maintained. Drawing primarily on the findings of the 2015 academic review of the Centre, the authors demonstrate how, within the changing information management environment, the ESRC provides immense value as a resource for the University and the research sector more generally. The paper concludes by indicating how the recommendations from the review will strengthen the relationship between the ESRC and the Library and how, within the context of the growing field of digital humanities, this relationship will help to position the University of Melbourne at the forefront of social and cultural informatics practice and knowledge infrastructure development.

Coming together: inception of the ESRC

As early as the 1980s at the University of Melbourne, and indeed globally, the process of creating, synthesising, disseminating and interconnecting knowledge had been fundamentally transformed by the advent of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT). Initially, it began with the dissemination of scholarly information, as technology provided access to specialised bibliographic searching tools and early implementations of stand-alone e-learning tools. Within Australia, implementation of the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) in 1989 and growth in digital multimedia capabilities began to provide more opportunities for collaboration, online access to full text scholarly information and more sophisticated e-learning opportunities, all of which relied upon ICT. It was at this time the opportunity was realised to establish a coordinated and enterprise-wide unit that could address the strategic critical elements of contemporary academia embodied in such terms as e-research, e-science and e-humanities.

Prior to the Centre’s formal establishment, the University had fostered two significant pockets of expertise in e-scholarship, one in the Faculty of Arts and the other in Information Services. In the Faculty of Arts, the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre (Austehc) had become an internationally recognised innovator in humanities computing with particular expertise in archival information systems, contextual information systems and the utilisation of archival materials to support research and community development. In Information Services, complementary expertise and experience existed, including work in investigating digital repository needs, technologies and implementation, well-developed expertise in information management, e-learning tools and technologies, and grid and advanced computing. Both groups already had significant interconnections and each had wide-ranging links to other similar areas of activity across the University. Austehc had also developed a substantial external network of colleagues, partners and clients that utilised its services and software. Information Services had been particularly active in raising awareness of e-research issues within the university more generally.

In 2006, the ESRC was established as a research centre in Information Services (which then incorporated the University Library). The concept of a research centre based in an administrative unit outside Faculty structures was new in the University of Melbourne, but enabled the development of university-wide services and support for interdisciplinary research projects. The ESRC was tasked with making significant contributions to the university through innovation, applied research and knowledge transfer activities that would contribute directly to teaching, learning and research. The main functions of the ESRC are articulated as follows:

•	Engagement through participation with the global research community in the creation and dissemination of information to address societal needs.
•	Scholarly services through working with the University of Melbourne and others to enhance their digital archive and knowledge preservation infrastructure.
•	Research into social and cultural informatics, archival science and research data management.
•	Collaboration with other researchers in the use of digital technologies to extend their research capabilities (Chitty, 2015).

With its broader research agenda including the advancement of knowledge in the discovery, contextualisation and interpretation of information in published literature, archival records and research data, the ESRC found a natural organisational alignment with the University Library when it was disestablished from Information Services. From 2007 until 2014, the governance of the ESRC was through direct regular reporting and oversight of the Library Executive and the University Librarian. The Director of the ESRC was a member of the Library Executive, and the ESRC operations were included in the Library’s operational plans and reports. It was during this period of organisational stability and strategic support that the ESRC undertook some of its most significant and successful research projects, including Find and Connect (http://www.findandconnect.gov.au).

Coming together: the introduction of the Melbourne Operating Model

Commencing in late 2013 and continuing through 2014, the University undertook the Business Improvement Program (BIP), which led to the most significant change to its operating model in its one-hundred-and-sixty-year-history, namely the implementation of the Melbourne Operating Model (MOM). Under MOM, operational activities of the University were grouped together as University Services to support Academic Divisions to deliver on their teaching, research and engagement agendas, with Chancellery providing leadership on strategy, policy, brand and capital. No area of administration was untouched by this significant change. The aim was to build a flexible and more nimble operational structure and make the best use of available ideas and technologies to support innovation. By enhancing the organisation’s effectiveness, the University would be better placed to generate value for students, staff and external communities, as well as redirect significant portions of funding that was previously tied up in operating administration activities to support research and the academic divisions.

In 2015, the enactment of the MOM resulted in significant changes to the place of the University Library in the organisational structure of the University. The University Librarian role became University Librarian and Executive Director Collections, residing in University Chancellery to provide strategic direction and policy oversight to the Library and the University’s other cultural collections primarily owned and managed by the Academic Divisions. Library operations, as delivered by the two directorates of Scholarly Information and Research and Collections, were positioned in the Academic Services division of University Services, with both Directors reporting to the Executive Director for Academic Services.

Scholarly Information is primarily responsible for front-of-house library services, extending also to engagement with students and academics on research and teaching and learning needs through a discipline-based staffing model. Research and Collections is a group of diverse yet interconnected groups and functions responsible for the acquisition and care of scholarly collections in both physical and digital formats. It applies technology solutions and descriptive metadata to maximise discoverability of and access to the resources within these collections. The ESRC was placed within Research and Collections, alongside:

•	Collection Access and Delivery – Library systems, discovery, access and metadata services.
•	Collection Development and Analysis – acquisition and analysis of collection materials.
•	Special Collections and Grainger Museum – access, discovery and curation of special and rare collections.
•	Research Information Management – services and support for the research community, including open access repository, research impact, digitisation, digital scholarship, data curation, data forensics, digital preservation.
•	University Archives – collection and preservation of records relating to the University and to business and business people for the purposes of historical research.

The vision of Research and Collections is to advance the University’s research, learning and engagement agenda through the acquisition, care and leverage of its rich and diverse scholarly collections infrastructure. Its mission is to develop, implement and maintain services, systems, processes and partnerships that facilitate the acquisition, discovery and access to collections and unlock their potential in support of the needs of Melbourne’s scholarly and learning community.

The ESRC is well placed in Research and Collections, alongside new groups such as Digital Scholarship which have been developed in response to the data deluge and digital nature of research with a focus on data curation, digital forensics, and digital preservation; and with a role to support the sustainability, persistence, and traceability of digital research legacy, facilitating interconnectability. This new programme of support and services aims to optimise the digital transformation of scholarly practice through partnership with researchers and scholars at the university. At the same time, more traditional areas such as the University Archives are focused on developing new areas of business and services to meet the challenges of collecting and providing access in a digital environment.

Keeping together

Technology has profoundly transformed research, and researchers in the sciences in particular have quickly adapted to new ways of working. Researchers are operating in an environment where data volumes are rapidly increasing and the activity of re-contextualising and re-interpreting these data is an integral part of the research process, leading to new discoveries and knowledge.

Humanities researchers adopt a wide variety of approaches to their research. Their work tends to focus on texts and images, but they use and also create a wide range of information resources, often on their own and collaborating only informally through highly dispersed networks. A significant shift in humanities research over the past ten to fifteen years has been the growth of more formal and systematic collaboration between researchers. This is a response in part to new funding opportunities, but also, as with the sciences, to the possibilities opened up by new technology.

Alongside the ‘business as usual’ operational activities and service agreements that Research and Collections deliver to academic divisions under the new operating model, opportunity has also been provided to partner and pilot new services and physical spaces to foster research in a digital environment.

Keeping together: the Digital Studio

Internationally, a number of research institutions have established ‘bricks and mortar’ digital scholarship/humanities centres or laboratories that provide services to help researchers design, produce, disseminate and maintain digital projects in a collaborative environment. Most often located in libraries, with research support services ranging from the highly technical to the more traditional, these centres have incubated important research, fostered scholars comfortable with the technology and provided support for those who are not.

Digital Humanities is inherently a collaborative endeavour. At the University of Melbourne, the Faculty of Arts and University Library are currently collaborating on a proposal to establish a Digital Studio which will have a direct physical connection between a new Arts Faculty building and the University’s flagship Baillieu Library. The project involves the establishment of a facility that will provide services and infrastructure to support University researchers, professionals and select industry experts, and students working on Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences (HASS) digital projects. The ESRC has been integrally involved in planning for this facility and is expected to make a significant contribution to its establishment, ongoing operation and future success. The Digital Studio will be a front-of-house venue for Library and ESRC staff to provide training and delivery of a range of research support services in areas such as informatics, research data management, digitisation, digital preservation and data mining.

Keeping together: Social and Cultural Informatics Platform

The ESRC’s Social and Cultural Informatics Lab was created as a development and testing ground for informatics solutions in archival science, the social sciences and digital humanities. The Social and Cultural Informatics Platform (SCIP) has grown out of this testing ground as a partnership project primarily between the ESRC and the Digital Scholarship team. SCIP was established in 2015 as a two-year pilot to support digital scholarship, strategic partnerships and engagement between specialist expertise in the University Library and academics in the HASS and the Visual & Performing Arts (VPA). The fundamental aim of SCIP is to develop innovative sociotechnical methods, practices and protocols for collecting, managing, reusing and curating digital research data and output of significant academic and research value. This expertise involves data capture, curation and archiving capabilities from the University Library, and domain expertise from the academic faculty partners.

The research data management challenges for the faculties in HASS and VPA are distinctly different from those in the STEM or Health Science disciplines. At present, the opportunities deriving from the ongoing capture, curation and reuse of digital research data are under-explored. SCIP presents a prodigious opportunity for HASS and VPA to establish a research platform that directly supports digital scholarship. The platform will ensure that research data management and sustainability become part of core faculty business by capitalising on and expanding technical infrastructure while fostering an informatics culture within the faculties.

Within its initial window of operation, SCIP will establish methods, protocols and sustainable workflows to connect HASS and VPA research data, so as to transform them from dormant, inaccessible assets to active, reusable research components. The SCIP sociotechnical approach will enable researchers to:

•	identify and preserve research data assets;
•	explore new possibilities for partnership and collaboration within and across faculties;
•	establish shared communities of practice that will generate and augment research impact; and
•	capitalise on research data collections in order to attract funding, scholars and community engagement.

Keeping together: the 2015 review of the ESRC

The ESRC has been well placed structurally to develop synergies with those areas working on data management, archives, metadata and the organisation, discovery and access of information resources. It remains, however, the only non-faculty institutional research centre at the University of Melbourne. This creates challenges and tensions in terms of balancing the ESRC’s operational research support functions with its core research agenda, and how that operates most effectively within the University Services mandate.

In line with established University protocols, as an institutional research centre, the ESRC is on a five-year review cycle. These tensions and their impact on the future of the Centre were central to the considerations of the panel for the 2015 academic review of the Centre. Although the main focus of the review was the performance of the Centre for the 2010–2014 period, the terms of reference for the review also stated that ‘in light of the implementation of the new Melbourne Operating Model, the review of the eScholarship Research Centre should consider (among other things) its structural and operational links within Research and Collections and other sections within Academic Services’ (Chitty & Goodman, 2015). The review panel was chaired by Professor David Goodman from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies in the Faculty of Arts. Panel members were Teresa Chitty (Director, Research and Collections, Academic Services), Professor Julie Willis (Research, Architecture, Building and Planning) and Dr Lyle Winton (Deputy Director (Research Platforms), NeCTAR).

Submissions from the Library, including from the University Librarian and the Director of Scholarly Information, were very positive about the relationship of the ESRC to the Library during the review period. They emphasised the role of the ESRC in training library staff in digital scholarship, including through the embedding of Library staff seconded to the Centre. They regarded the Centre’s past affiliation with the Library as mutually beneficial and stated that they fully expect that a productive relationship would continue within the MOM, under which both the ESRC and Digital Scholarship are part of the Research and Collections division of Academic Services.

The value provided by the ESRC to researchers in the Arts Faculty in particular was made clear in several other submissions. The report noted that Arts researchers typically lack the technical skills needed to make e-scholarship projects work on their own, but are often dealing with material and issues of high public interest and concern. All the evidence indicated that the ESRC collaborations, major and minor, with Arts scholars (and with scholars from other HASS faculties and units including Education, Social Work, Law, and Business and Economics) have been working extremely well. The ESRC also works with academics in STEM faculties and departments, including the Faculties of Science and Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (MDHS). It was suggested that further developing the STEM relationships of the ESRC (which after all began as a science archiving project) would make even clearer that the Centre has a university-wide service and research role.

The provision of what one submission called ‘reliable public information infrastructure’ is a key part of the ESRC’s purpose. The current and future status of the tools developed by the ESRC was one of the issues upon which the panel focused. These tools include the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), developed and upgraded by the ESRC and its predecessor organisations since 1999; the Heritage Document Management System (HDMS) and Documenting Records and Archives (DORA), released in 2012 as a tool that could be used by archivists in the field and recently used by the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries. Several submissions suggested that these tools (in particular the OHRM) are now in need of updating in the context of the current digital research environment, and it was noted that while the OHRM ‘holds much unharnessed power and great untapped potential’ the future iterations of OHRM would need greater interoperability and integration with library systems.

The panel was interested at the outset to investigate the relationship between the ESRC and the other university bodies working in related fields. One submission highlighted possibilities for collaboration or co-provision of services between ESRC and the Digital Scholarship team in areas such as knowledge management, collection development and maintenance, digital preservation, upskilling and staff training, and research data management. There was unanimity from those active in the field that up to now, the existing roles and organisations have made sense, are working, are differentiated in meaningful ways, and are collaborating in ways that have made the existence of a number of agile, smaller cooperating units a virtue rather than a problem. It was indicated by some that in the future closer alignment of the ongoing operational aspects of the Centre’s business with Digital Scholarship would be desirable.

The Review posed two key questions relating to the need to find a balance between the ESRC’s service role and its research purpose.

•	How should the service aspects of the Centre work, and in what ways is the Centre providing a core service to the University?
•	With regard to research, does the Centre have a research agenda, how does this align with the University, and what needs to be done to focus and grow the research side of the ESRC?

In answering these questions, the panel concluded that while the Centre performs a core service to the University, more clarity is required around the demarcation of the Centre’s service functions and those provided by Digital Scholarship and the SCIP. A recommendation was made for planning to align future strategic and operational activities of these services, acknowledging that the ESRC needs to maintain its service as well as its research functions, and the balance and tensions between the two is an issue.

The services the ESRC provides are also the subject of its research – archiving practice and archival science, data curation and management, informatics, the development and maintenance of tools in these areas. That is why, to date, no clear and simple separation has been made between the service and research functions of the Centre. Closer alignment with Digital Scholarship and the SCIP will provide an opportunity for the Centre to be resourced in such a way that it can articulate its own research agenda and sustain a higher level of scholarly publishing on its own account as well as in collaboration.

The Panel affirmed that the University needs, and benefits from, the e-scholarship services and research conducted by the Centre and that these should be continued, with the proviso that planning is undertaken to align the service/support functions of the Centre with Digital Scholarship in order for the Centre to prioritise research and development in digital archiving science, informatics and data curation.

Working together: success

The ESRC has a long history of association and collaboration with the University Library. Recent organisational changes have strengthened that relationship and as the Library has developed services and capability in research data management and digital scholarship, it is more closely aligned with the ESRC than ever, particularly with the operational functions of the ESRC. The MOM provides an operational framework and a vital connection to the strategic imperatives of the University of Melbourne that allows the ESRC to continue to innovate. Participation in collaborative projects such as the Digital Studio and SCIP raises the Centre’s profile and allows it to fulfil and further its research agenda through cross-disciplinary partnerships.

The ESRC informs the development and enhancement of knowledge infrastructure and informatics practice through the range of research projects it undertakes. Operating as a research centre allows for the development of more experimental information/knowledge infrastructure, allowing capacity for innovation and greater flexibility and agility to respond to researcher needs and contribution to research projects, all of which have greatly benefited the Library by informing its workforce strategy and service development.

The ESRC Review panel concluded that:

•	the overall high importance of the Centre to the university is not in doubt;
•	the organisational structure and location of the ESRC within Research and Collections is effective and provides scope going forward for clearer articulation and more formal arrangements in areas of collaboration and service provision in supporting digital humanities and archival science, data management and informatics in particular;
•	being in a central University structure, rather than attached to one Faculty, has been and will continue to be a positive thing for the ESRC; and
•	the hybrid professional/academic roles that the ESRC has been developing for its staff have evolved into something innovative, useful and sustainable.

It was even clearer in 2015 than it was at the time of the last review in 2010 that the e-scholarship contribution of the Centre underpins key aspects of the role and mission of the University. The Panel reflected that, in 2015, the distinction between ‘e-scholarship’ and ‘normal’ scholarship is less clear than it once was, because almost all scholars have some engagement with digital technologies and capacities. One submission to the review noted that during the review period (2010–2014), ‘scholarly communication and practice have undergone continual transformation’; another that the field of informatics has been ‘exploding’ with activity. These transformations only underscore the crucial role of an acknowledged locus of e-scholarship expertise and experience within the University.

In 2010, the Information Futures Commission directed a strategic review of the University’s scholarly information services and technologies, which resulted in the endorsement of Melbourne’s Scholarly Information Future – a ten-year strategy (University of Melbourne, 2011). The strategy articulated a number of principles and aspirations in the information environment of research, teaching and engagement to inform and influence decisions and planning ‘at a time when disruptive technologies are causing transformational change in society’. For the ESRC, various elements of this transformational change have come together within a context of significant organisational change to provide it with a sustainable, effective, operational and research framework that validates the importance of its symbiotic relationship with the University Library to enable our scholars to advance knowledge through creating, synthesising, contributing to and accessing scholarly works.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Teresa Chitty’s professional career started in New Zealand where she held senior roles in both academic and public libraries before taking up positions at the University of Western Australia, the University of Newcastle, and in 2013 the University of Melbourne as Director, Research and Collections. In this role, she leads and manages the development, implementation and maintenance of services, systems, processes and partnerships that facilitate the acquisition, discovery and access to collections and unlock their potential in support of the needs of the University’s scholarly and learning community.

Donna McRostie has worked in a variety of information management roles in higher education over the last 20 years. She currently leads and manages the Research Information Management group at the University of Melbourne. The group is responsible for the initiation, development, delivery, evaluation and continuous improvement of a range of services and programmes designed to support and enhance research outcomes and success at the University of Melbourne.

Notes

* This paper has been double-blind peer reviewed to meet the Department of Higher Education’s Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) requirements.