Digital Library Strategies Forums

Over 200 participants from every campus attended either the northern or southern regional version of a Digital Library Strategies Forum hosted by the CDL in late March.  Focusing on the theme “Frameworks for Collaboration,” participants shared information about activities at their campus and discussed collaborative strategies for building digital components of UC library and information services.  Separate afternoon breakout sessions focused on shared collections, tools and services, educating users, and technology standards and architectures.

Most participants were invited from campus libraries, but faculty, data centers, instructional development offices, and visual resource collections were also represented.  The opportunity to discuss openly the intersections between campus activities and CDL work and planning was acknowledged as a crucial component of defining and building the “co-library.”  Participants reported that the forum successfully helped create a shared understanding of the potential for collaboration on digital library issues within UC.  The list of challenges and opportunities that the forums generated will be enormously useful as development of the CDL proceeds.  A thematic summary of discussions from the forum will be posted soon in the “libstaff” section of the forum, where the forum agenda and background documents are already available (http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/).