Academic Innovation transforms digital research by using a range of tools and methods to enhance research, teaching, and learning, as well as developing and deploying software to support the discovery, access, and use of digital resources.
Built an installable, open-source semantic discovery tool using generative AI, and implemented the tool with Northwestern's Digital Collections. Testing and validation for a metadata augmentation toolkit ongoing.
Funded by an IMLS National Leadership Grant 2024-2026
Digitizing the vast archive of Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) held in Northwestern's Transportation Library, deploying an agentic AI framework pioneered at Northwestern to ingest and analyze historical EIS data. Development of an interactive front-end interface for inquiry and environmental data insights.
Funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Collaboration with the Medill Knight Lab.
Curation and stewardship of analysis-ready datasets hosted in a cloud environment, enabling improved discoverability, cost-sharing, and use without downloading.
Collaboration between Northwestern University Libraries and Kellogg Research Support
Exploration, creation and implementation of best practices for content credentials to be applied to Northwestern Libraries collections and data, assuring that provenance and authenticity information are provided with digital files.
Librarians with expertise in digital scholarship and data services provide consultation, collaboration and co-authorship for projects that involve digital research methods, data science and digital publishing.
Developers and experts in Academic Innovation build and support platforms for the curation, discovery, access and analysis of collections, data and other scholarly output from Northwestern University.
Arch is an open access repository for the research, data, and scholarly output of Northwestern University. Deposit, describe, and organize research for access and preservation. Experts help curate and share your work worldwide.
Arch is maintained as a browsable repository by the Libraries, and experts in Academic Engagement are available to help develop research data retention and storage plans.
Canopy IIIF is an active open-source initiative from Northwestern University Libraries that generates a scholarly digital projects platform to transform provided IIIF collections and manifestos into an accessible, discoverable research environment.
Canopy provides a tool for building context-rich interoperable static sites within minutes that can be deployed anywhere static files can be served.
The Data Library is Northwestern’s repository for research datasets used across the University. It supports data discoverability and cost sharing while reducing storage challenges and long processing times. The library offers curated, analysis-ready datasets hosted in a cloud environment, enabling use without downloading.
Collaboration between Northwestern University Libraries and Kellogg Research Support.
Academic Innovation builds and supports the open source digital collection platform for Northwestern Libraries, as well as curating, digitizing, and describing collections for discoverability. We also offer a full-featured API to search, aggregate, and use data from Northwestern digital collections in your own applications and workflows.
The annual, online, open access, peer-reviewed journal of the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought.
Built in collaboration with NU RPLRT Research Initiative and Media and Design Studio.
An open-access digital collection of translated and contextualized Arabic manuscripts from Muslim West Africa, from the collections of the Northwestern Libraries and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library.
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Collaboration between Northwestern University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The annual, online, open access, peer-reviewed forum for research of all theoretical and methodological approaches oriented toward the identification, analysis, and improvement of the material conditions of transgender life.
Built in collaboration with the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.