On the Edge: Balancing Space and Services in a Digital Scholarship Program

Abstract

Duke University Libraries’ The Edge: The Ruppert Commons for Research + Technology + Collaboration was conceived as a space to support interdisciplinary, data-driven, and digitally reliant team-based research. This chapter considers what lessons pertain to the development of library spaces and programs in support of 21st-century research. As a space renovated in order to better serve research needs at Duke University and simultaneously articulate and promote the Libraries’ digital research services, The Edge offers a case study in flexibility – how to create space that can accommodate a range of uses and also evolve, strategically and responsively, to other campus programs and spaces and to researcher needs – and points to the continued importance of understanding and negotiating the role of innovative spaces and programs within established communities and cultures, practices and expectations.