Thematic research collections: Libraries and the evolution of alternative scholarly publishing in the humanities

Fenlon, Katrina S.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99380 Copy

Description

Title

Thematic research collections: Libraries and the evolution of alternative scholarly publishing in the humanities

Author(s)

Fenlon, Katrina S.

Issue Date

2017-12-06

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Palmer, Carole

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Palmer, Carole

Committee Member(s)

• Bonn, Maria
• Flanders, Julia
• Renear, Allen

Department of Study

Information Sciences

Discipline

Library & Information Science

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Collections
• Scholarly communication
• Thematic research collections
• Digital publishing
• Digital collections and archives
• Libraries

Abstract

Scholarship across disciplines is changing in the face of digital methodologies, novel forms of evidence, and new communication technologies. In the humanities, scholars are confronting and often pioneering innovative modes of viewing, reading, interacting with, collecting, interpreting, contextualizing, and sharing their sources and derived evidence. From research blogs to multimedia products to large-scale digital corpora, new forms of scholarly production challenge conventions of publishing and scholarly evaluation and the long-term maintenance of scholarship in libraries. The omission of digital scholarship from systems of scholarly communication – including peer review, discovery, organization, and preservation – poses a potential detriment to the evolution of humanities scholarship and the completeness of the scholarly record. One emergent genre of digital production in the humanities is the thematic research collection (Palmer, 2004): a collection of primary sources created by scholarly effort to support research on a theme. Thematic research collections constitute a diverse genre with a range of functions beyond supporting research: collections serve as hubs for experimentation, collaboration, and communication; facilitate the reuse of humanities data; generate new lines of inquiry and original evidence; and engage broad audiences. Yet, despite their significant and distinctive contributions to scholarship, thematic research collections have struggled to gain integration into systems of evaluation and post-publication management in libraries, in part because we do not know enough about them. This study investigates the defining features of thematic research collections and considers the challenges for libraries in supporting this genre. Through a typological analysis of a large sample of collections in tandem with a qualitative content analysis of representative collections, this study identifies different types of thematic research collections, which make different kinds of contributions to scholarship. Through interviews with practitioners in digital humanities centers and libraries, this study illuminates challenges to the sustainability and preservation of thematic research collections, and potential strategies for ensuring their long-lived contributions to scholarship. This study lays a foundation for understanding collections as a significant, dynamic, vibrant exemplar of how digital scholarship continues to evolve, with implications for library practice and the evolution of research and communication across disciplines.

Graduation Semester

2017-12

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99380

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Katrina S. Fenlon

Owning Collections