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Hi Eric, These are big, important questions! Collaboration is a giant topic in digital scholarship, so I'll just offer a few brief thoughts. I would say that part of it depends on the kind of work. Is it a one-off consultation? An ongoing project? Is the library offering long-term support, whether through storage, labor, or other expertise? As Kari mentions, the question of copyright is likely a question of institutional policy. But the other elements you mention—MOUs and attribution—get a little murkier. For ongoing projects or larger-term investments, at least, I think MOUs are a great idea. They help define the scope of the collaboration, in addition to outlining roles and responsibilities. UT-Arlington has a nice collection of MOUs: https://uta-ir.tdl.org/uta-ir/handle/10106/25646. My view is that if you want to create a culture of collaboration, it helps to be explicit about it. As such, I like TaDiRAH's taxonomy of digital humanities scholarship activities, objects, and techniques: https://github.com/dhtaxonomy/TaDiRAH/tree/master/reading I'm happy to chat further—I love this topic! Sarah On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 12:04 PM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > To what degree do any of you enter into memorandums of understanding > between yourselves and the people for whom you provide services? Similarly, > are the products of your services copyrighted, and if so, then by whom? And > finally, if you provide services to your constituents, then to what degree > do you require copyright statements and/or acknowledgements? > > I work in a digital scholarship center with a number of other people. [1] > As a group, we provide sets of different value-added services to students, > faculty, and staff. These value-added services go beyond the packaging and > re-packaging of data/information. Instead, our services are analysis > against content. We evaluate data given to us and answer questions like: > what trends can be gleaned from this data, what are the anomalies, when & > where did given events occur, what are some of the possible reasons why, > etc. In this way, we act more akin to “special librarians” where we > essentially "give them the fish as opposed to teaching them to fish." These > value added services often manifest themselves in the forms of software > systems/scripts, indexes, datasets, as well as charts/graphs. Many of our > constituents are humanities and social sciences scholars. As such and in > general, they do possess the skills necessary to some of our text mining, > GIS, and statistical analysis. Additionally and unlike the hard scientists, > they often work in very very small groups of single individuals; > co-authorship is uncommon. > > The center’s services are free, as in free beer. But the services > represent real scholarly effort. As such there is a desire to make explicit > our contributions. Such is part of the academic tradition. After all, our > intellectual capital is all we have. To resolve some of these issues, or to > bring them to the fore, there is some desire to enter into memorandums of > understanding — a sort of contract outlining different party’s roles & > responsibilities. There is some desire to add copyright attribution > statements to charts & graphs. There is some desire to ensure, at the very > least, acknowledgements in articles & presentations. Heck, if we were to go > the whole nine yards, then there are also desires to have the whole kits & > caboodles deposited into local repositories. > > On the other hand, much of this flies in the face to traditional > librarianship, and after all, library services have always been free, and > if we require memorandums, copyright statements, and/or acknowledgements, > then the scholars may simply do without. > > How might some of y’all be dealing with these changing roles in your > libraries? > > [1] center - http://library.nd.edu/cds/ > > — > Eric Lease Morgan, Digital Initiatives Librarian > Hesburgh Libraries > University of Notre Dame > Notre Dame, IN 46556 > > [log in to unmask] > 574/631-8604 > -- Sarah Melton Head of Digital Scholarship O'Neill Library Boston College 140 Commonwealth Ave. Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467