Philosophically, and often physically, libraries sit at the center of a university campus. Digital Scholarship Centers, a model for supporting new kinds of intellectual labor, have often been aligned with the library. In recent years, as “digital scholarship” has evolved from humanities-based technology projects, to include public access support, data management and curation, digital pedagogy, open educational resources, and much more, we believe the library must shed the Center-mentality to allow these and related activities to permeate the entire organization and cross boundaries with other campus research organizations.
Library workers performing digital scholarship (whether singly or as part of other projects) have become experts in areas of scholarly practice vital to the ethical and sustainable production and dissemination of scholarship in the 21st century. That is to say, library workers engaged in digital scholarly work bring scholarly expertise on topics such as openness, sustainability, innovative publication methods (etc), to the table; contributions on these topics are equally as valuable as subject or content expertise, and further scholarship as a whole immensely. As these library workers performing digital scholarship continue to inhabit larger and larger roles in scholarly work, they are rightfully seizing increasing portions of credit in these projects. This increased level of attribution, earned through their work, positions these participants in digital scholarship as fully-vetted contributors and collaborators. As collaborators, digital scholars within the library are redefining not only attribution and power dynamics currently entrenched in academia, but reinforcing the value of library contribution as vital to modern scholarship.