by Ginnette Calvo
Scholarly Commons is part of the University Library of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This space provides resources, consulting and training in areas related to data analysis, text-encoding, usability, among another.
Scholarly Commons focuses on providing academic services to faculty, researchers, and graduate students in support of teaching and research.
Among the services of Scholarly Commons, the following stand out:
- Data management
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
- Statistical Consulting
- Usability Testing
According to the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) competencies, Scholarly Commons is a reflection of the following competencies:
Evidence-based decision making and problem solving.
Due to the importance of their work, students, researchers, professors and different instances of the University, request their support in order to obtain information for decision making and problems solving, this is achieved with Data Analysis techniques such as Text Mining.
Collaboration and partnerships.
Part of the services they provide are offered in collaboration with campus partners, including Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES), ATLAS, The Writer’s Workshop, the Career Center. Scholarly Commons also has partnerships with the University’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, who is in charge of IDEALS, the University’s digital repository. Through this repository the knowledge of the students, faculty members and researchers is shared, this promote the dissemination and free access to information.
During my visit to the Scholarly Commons, several aspects caught my attention:
- According to Karen Hogenboom, Scholarly Commons Librarian, each time they have more specialized services and continuously make changes and adjustments in the technological equipment and physical spaces, for the benefit of their users.
- Scholarly Commons provide a community and collaborative environment where users feel comfortable.
- Scholarly Commons help users in their research processes but also focus on making new knowledge accessible for the benefit of all.
Visit to the Scholarly Commons, May 24th, 2018.
Therefore, Scholarly Commons is characterized by providing a space of collaboration with personalized services, highly trained professionals, equipment and software of great capacity in order to help professors, researchers and graduate students in their research and encourage them to share their knowledge.