If it is indeed the goal of the IU Libraries to make the “digital” pervasive, it behooves us all as information professionals to look closely not just at the units in which IT-related work is conducted, but all units across the IU Libraries, from catalogers to subject librarians. If we sincerely want to embark on transforming our role in the academy, it’s time for a sweeping cultural change, not just an organizational change.

We are not alone in this sentiment, and we have begun to see initiatives and trends happening at peer academic libraries like University of Virginia and University of Maryland, College Park with impressive collections, strong digital infrastructure, and renown digital humanities research conducted in partnership with the library: IATH at UVa and MITH at Maryland. At UVa, library staff follows the 80/20 research model, where librarians, technologists and other library professionals are able to dedicate 20% of their time pursuing their own research and creative interests. As in the case of UVa some of these endeavors become important software solutions like Blacklight. Bethany Nowviskie’s celebrated blog post, “a skunk in the library,” illustrates the importance of keeping library professionals engaged and skill sets current – in ways that are meaningful and in the spirit of recognizing librarians, technologists and archivists as the researchers and equal collaborators that we are. The 20% would allow us to experiment, innovate, and simply grow professionally regardless of the end result, but we suspect in most cases the end result would form the basis of supporting services moving forward. Bethany discusses this approach to professional development in the context of the Scholar’s Lab, but this approach is being more widely adopted across the UVa Library.

At Maryland, Trevor Muñoz highlights a new albeit experimental initiative undertaken in partnership between the library and MITH, in which librarians are recognized as digital humanists in their own right in his post “Digital humanities in the library isn’t service.” The initiative is known as the Digital Humanities Incubator, and is very much inspired by Bethany Nowviskie’s “skunk in the library” blog post and the UVa Scholar’s Lab Praxis Program . The Incubator provides a collaborative space with technical resources and training opportunities that will allow for librarians to realize their own digital research projects without necessarily having to attain approval or partner with teaching faculty. Instead they are afforded some percentage of time, along with dedicated resources, to pursue this endeavor.

At the recent HathiTrust Research Center Uncamp, we learned that other academic libraries are transforming their librarians and professional staff in relevant ways. Columbia University under Alex Gil’s direction is in the process on defining a two-year, hands-on training program modeled after the Praxis Program to prepare subject librarians to take the front lines in their digital humanities efforts. We learned of other academic libraries in the process of embracing this shift – University of Minnesota, Johns Hopkins and others. We are not alone in reconceiving our reference services or our digital library/humanities initiatives. Nor should we do so in a half-hearted manner or without consulting other groups who have led the way.

In truly embracing a radical shift in how we do our work and how we value research and creative output by librarians and library professionals, we not only do we keep growing and learning, but we also make the Indiana University Libraries a coveted place for prospective employees and cross-campus partnerships.

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So yeah, this is on my mind.