This post builds on my previous writing, What is Digital Scholarship?

In today’s installment about Digital Scholarship, I feature a 2013 EDUCAUSE article written by Ed Ayers, “Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?”  In this piece Ayers, President of the University of Richmond and National Humanities Medalist, explores concerns about how the primary activities of scholars, which remain primarily monograph and journal-article writing, have not changed to match the disruption of other parts of society by the “digital revolution.”

He writes:

Digital scholarship, reimagined in bolder ways, is cost-effective, a smart return on investment.  By radically extending the audience for a work of scholarship, by reaching students of many ages and backgrounds, by building the identity of the institutions by attracting and keeping excellent faculty and students, by creating bonds between faculty and the library, and by advancing knowledge across many otherwise disparate disciplines, innovative digital scholarship makes sense…Digital scholarship is the missing part of the cycle of productivity that we have long believed our investments in information technology would bring to institutions of higher education.

I agree with Ayers that Digital Scholarship “makes sense,” especially at an aspirational institution like Chapman University.  Our faculty need to be involved in the kinds of innovative scholarly projects that cannot be represented on paper.  Moreover, our students deserve an institution that can prepare them for a networked, interdisciplinary, information-driven digital world.  I am especially enchanted with the possibilities of “generative scholarship,” which Ayers explains as projects that build “ongoing, ever-growing digital environments” as more users become engaged.  This mode of scholarly collaboration has the possibility of engaging a diverse public while creating new knowledge and forging connections across traditional academic disciplines.  And above all, the aims of generative digital scholarship align with the vision our own university, to engage in “programs that are interconnected” and “reach beyond the boundaries of the classroom.”