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Digital Library Services in the Information Arcade

It’s the dawn of a new era in the Information Arcade®. In its first 20 years, much of the focus in the Arcade was on integrating technology into teaching and learning, which has become mainstream activity on campus and supported by many different departments like ITS-Instructional Services.

Digital Library Services has relocated to the Arcade to create a center of digital research and scholarship. In the coming year, we will focus on integrating technology into research and scholarship – supporting new forms of scholarly publishing, digital humanities, data curation, and open/linked data. The Arcade will be the home of the Iowa Digital Library and Iowa Research Online. It will also be a place for librarian/faculty partnerships in e-research and other digital library initiatives.

Rather than defining a set of services, we want to remain flexible and embrace the notion of “perpetual beta,” mirroring the collaborative, dynamic processes used in e-research and e-scholarship. To that end we are kicking off an e-Research task force which will employ several information-gathering strategies, ranging from brown bag discussions to a public planning wiki, and work together across disciplines and professional roles (e.g., scholar, librarian, IT professional) to identify themes and develop a plan of action.

Many of the services previously offered in the Information Arcade have been mainstreamed across campus. For example multimedia software titles, including the Adobe Creative Suite, are widely available in campus ITCs and on library public workstations. For specific questions, inquire at the ITS Help Desk (319-384-HELP) or the Main Library Information Desk (319-335-5299).