With the rise of digital scholarship, humanists are participating in increasingly complex research teams and partnerships, and academic libraries are developing innovative service models to meet their needs. This paper explores modes of coworking in humanities research by synthesizing responses from two qualitative studies of research practices in the humanities and proposes a taxonomy of multiperson research that includes collaborative, consultative, and transactional research partnerships among scholars, graduate students, academic staff, and a range of other potential stakeholders. Based on an analysis of humanities scholars' self-described research behaviors, we provide recommendations for academic librarians who are developing and sustaining service models for digital scholarship.

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Makerspaces have become increasingly common in academic libraries, but libraries are not alone in their enthusiasm for the creative and innovative culture known as the maker movement. As more libraries develop makerspaces, so do other campus units and universities. This article presents a case study of the Indiana University Libraries' makerspace initiatives and their role in a larger network of makerspaces on the IU Bloomington campus. The author synthesizes examples from several institutions to make recommendations for libraries looking to contribute to the maker culture at their institution.

PurposeUsing chat transcripts from Indiana University Libraries, the authors examined a subset of transcripts involving citations. From this analysis, they propose improvements for citation assistance as a holistic service.Design/methodology/approachTwo years of chat transcripts were examined and questions containing citation-related keywords were segregated for further examination. The authors used a test data set to create a coding scheme for the questions and responses. This scheme was then applied to all the citation-related transcripts.Findings390 of 11,553 transcripts included interactions about citations. In 42% of the transcripts, no specific citation style was mentioned. American Psychological Association and Modern Language Association were the most frequently mentioned citation styles by chat users. Business reports (company data and market research), periodicals (journal, newspaper or magazine articles), websites and government documents were the most often asked about formats, but there was a wide variety of other unusual formats. Questions about EndNote were more common than other types of citation management software. Chat staff utilized a variety of responses including guiding the student by example, directing to an online resource for more information (85% of the responses) or referring to a citation management expert. An unexpected amount of hedging words in the responses indicates the presence of anxiety on the part of chat staff in responding to these types of questions.Originality/valueThis paper goes beyond most existing studies of chat transcripts by using chat transcripts as data to guide service improvements for a commonly asked but not typically discussed set of questions.

The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) is undertaking a study to better understand the needs of current and potential users of the center's tools and services for computational text analysis. In this paper, we report on the results of the first phase of the study, which consisted of interviews with scholars, administrators, and librarians whose work involves text data mining. Our study reveals that text analysis workflows are specific to the individual research project and are often nonlinear. In spite of, and in some cases because of, the wealth of textual data available, scholars find it most difficult to locate, access, and curate textual data for their research. While the goals of the study directly relate to research and development for the HTRC, our results are useful for other large-scale data providers developing solutions for allowing computational access to their content.