1. Digital Research Consortium
- With a prominent node in UCLA’s Young Research Library, the DRC advances computationally inflected research and digital scholarship in all fields of the humanities, social sciences, arts, library and archival studies, information studies, public policy, law, entrepreneurship, and related fields.
- The DRC connects faculty researchers, technology staff, librarians, and students to create an intellectual hub around digital research and big data.
- The DRC collaborates with a wide-range of centers and institutes across north and south campus, including the Digital Library, Special Collections, the Library Data Sciences Center, DResSUP, HumTech, IDRE, the RITC “Digital Accelerator Program,” Workshops@UCLA, the Lux Lab, the DAL, and Scholarly Innovation Lab
2. Tags, Technologies, And Outputs
- Innovation; experimentation; knowledge-design; networked humanities, arts, and social sciences; digital scholarship; big cultural and social data; applied research.
- Data modelling, data visualization, 3D and 4D modelling, gaming environments, augmented and virtual reality, digital archiving, GIS and spatial analysis, thick mapping, mobile and web-based applications, text analysis, data mining, network analysis, and user interface design.
- Traditional and digital publications, exhibitions, policy reports, data sets, websites, apps, videos, installations, and performances.
3. Need
Computational methods, big data, and digital scholarship have fundamentally changed the nature of research across north campus: Not only is research more experimental and collaborative, but it investigates and contributes to the cultural, social, and historical records of humankind in ways that enrich society and drive change. While the foundational technical needs of faculty and students are well served by existing units, there is no single place for north campus faculty to get dedicated support for advanced, computationally inflected research and digital scholarship, particularly when the research needs cross divisional boundaries.
With its central node in the Young Research Library, the DRC functions as connective tissue, bringing together faculty, library and technology staff, and students around computational methods, data-driven research, and digital scholarship. It builds on existing areas and sites of expertise in the Library (big data, digital archiving, the scholarly innovation labs) but adds more robust staffing, infrastructure, and coordination across the various divisions. As such, the DRC is an intellectual hub for research around big data, visualization, modelling, and digital scholarship more generally. It is fiercely transdisciplinary, deeply collaborative, and experiment-driven. Through its broad-based collaborations, the DRC supports rapid prototyping, experimentation, and digital research projects at all stages of conception and development.
- An active community of scholars, librarians, students, and technologists.
- A network of four dedicated spaces offering distributed access to concentrations of expertise. Each space has a resident technologist who serves as the DRC point of contact.
- Shared equipment including a large-screen presentation wall, a mobile cart for remote web meetings, high-end workstations, meeting tables, and rolling whiteboards.
- A lightweight organization. Open doors. Participants belong to/ engage with the DRC, but remain administratively centered in their existing units.
- A growing network of partners with support from the UCLA Library, the Dean of Humanities, IDRE, and the Cotsen Institute.
For more information please email sil@ucla.edu.