ARL, CNI, EDUCAUSE Release “Stewarding the Scholarly and Cultural Record,” Fourth Installment of Emerging Technologies Report

Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement with Emerging Technologies in Research and Learning:Stewarding the Scholarly and Cultural RecordBy Sarah LippincottEdited by Mary Lee Kennedy, Clifford Lynch, and Scout CalvertMay 27, 2020 2 Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement: Stewarding the Scholarly and Cultural RecordTable of ContentsLandscape Overview 3Strategic Opportunities 4Advance open research and publishing practices 4Reinforce integrity and trust in the scholarly and cultural record 7Preserve the evolving scholarly and cultural record 11Key Takeaways 17Endnotes 18This is the fourth installment of a forthcoming report, Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement with Emerging Technologies in Research and Learning, that will be published in its entirety by late spring 2020.The following installments are being published as they become available at https://doi.org/10.29242/report.emergingtech2020.landscape:• Executive Summary [published March 26, 2020]• Introduction, Methodology, and Cross-Cutting Opportunities [published April 2, 2020]• Facilitating Information Discovery and Use [published April 14, 2020]• Stewarding the Scholarly and Cultural Record [published May 27, 2020]• Advancing Digital Scholarship• Furthering Learning and Student Success• Building and Managing Learning and Collaboration Spaces 3 Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement: Stewarding the Scholarly and Cultural RecordLandscape OverviewLibraries bear responsibility not only for providing immediate access to broad and deep research collections, but for the long-term preservation of the scholarly record and the documentary evidence that comprises society’s digital cultural heritage. The practices of information stewardship are being challenged by an expanded scholarly and cultural record that is “mutable and dynamic,”1 unwieldy in its size and complexity, inextricably networked (that is, dependent on other components for context and interpretation), and ephemeral.2 Many digital outputs are created within closed systems using proprietary technologies that further complicate content harvesting and preservation. Digital formats also pose new challenges for libraries in ensuring authenticity of digital content. Memory institutions are built on trust: the trust that materials under their stewardship are authentic, immutable, and preserved in perpetuity or deaccessioned through a transparent and well-understood process.The complexity of digital stewardship, and the inversion of value brought about by the networked environment, make preservation of local collections all the more critical. Unique holdings, rather than mass-distributed scholarly resources, are becoming the research library’s most valuable assets; libraries have a key role in stewarding this “hyperlocal digital memory.”3Stewarding the digital record requires new approaches to managing, “in a transparent and authentic way, support and context for the massively increasing volume of digital content at levels of rapid upward scalability.”4 All of these characteristics of the digital record—its diversity, scale, ephemerality, disaggregation of scholarly communications, and restrictive licensing of digital content—complicate this challenge. They require that memory institutions engage in proactive, upstream, capture processes, rather than the retroactive collecting that has characterized archival and collection development work for centuries.5 4 Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement: Stewarding the Scholarly and Cultural RecordYet, while funding and cooperation around mass digitization of physical artifacts has been robust over the last two decades, a similar approach has yet to crystallize for born-digital materials. A proactive approach to the preservation of the born-digital record requires technical, social, and legal solutions. Several of the experts interviewed for this report indicated a pressing need for coordinated, cross-institutional collaboration in order to adequately preserve the digital scholarly and cultural record.The following sections explore several of the emerging technologies that pose new challenges and offer new solutions to managing digital content throughout its life cycle. These sections address the library’s role in advancing open research and publishing practices, reinforcing integrity and trust in the scholarly and cultural record, and preserving the evolving scholarly and cultural record.Strategic OpportunitiesAdvance open research and publishing practicesLong-term preservation is in some ways contingent on, or at least the beneficiary of, advances in open scholarship. By supporting open research practices—including the adoption of open metadata standards, creation of machine-readable publications, and depositing outputs (including underlying data and code) in open repositories—libraries make research more discoverable, reusable, reproducible, and