image © Virginia Tech
Library Journal (LJ) recently interviewed Tyler Walters, dean of university libraries at Virginia Tech, on the beginning of his two-year appointment as the founding director of SHARE. SHARE, which stands for SHared Access Research Ecosystem, is a collaborative initiative of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), who established SHARE in 2013 to help maximize the benefits of research to science and society. The LJ interview covers SHARE’s origins and mission; the initiative’s current status and planned development; potential metrics; the roles of ARL, AAU, and APLU; SHARE’s relationship to CHORUS; challenges SHARE faces; and the outlook for buy-in on the part of potential users and researchers.
LJ interview highlights include:
LJ: You have extensive experience with archival materials, from paper to digital and hands-on to management. How has your career informed your position as director of SHARE, and how do you envision its mission?
[Walters:] I’ve gone from physical archival work to working with digital materials and digital scholarship, moving forward into repository development. SHARE is about leveraging the repositories that are in the ecosystem already, and coordinating the higher education community to make sure that research and scholarly output is open wherever possible. We’re paying attention to the words of the White House OSTP memo, which is what instigated us to get together—we view our work as broader than that.
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[LJ:] Do you feel SHARE will have buy-in from potential users/researchers?
[Walters:] In a word, yes. It’s been really amazing to me, the folks who have come along and asked, “How can I help?” There’s interest and buy-in across the spectrum, lots of buy-in from the research library and higher education communities—there are people seeing the need, so a lot of good feedback from universities and from their leadership. We have buy-in from some of the federal agencies—we’ve been discussing things with them and it’s gone well. CENDI, an interagency group dealing with technology, data, and information resources, has been a great place to have some of those conversations….
Read the full article by Lisa Peet, “Tyler Walters, Founding Director of SHARE, on Next Steps in Sharing Research,” published in Library Journal on October 13, 2014.
SHARE (SHared Access Research Ecosystem) is a higher education and research community initiative to ensure the preservation of, access to, and reuse of research outputs. SHARE aims to develop the infrastructure, workflow, and policy improvements necessary to maximize research impact. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have partnered to develop SHARE with significant input from the three associations’ member institutions and their broader communities. SHARE is funded, in part, by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
