Commission on Cyberinfrastructure

With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ACLS appointed a national Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences. John Unsworth, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, chaired the commission. In 2004, the commission carried out research, hearings, and consultations to gather information and develop perspective about how scholars in the humanities and interpretive social sciences were using digital tools and technologies and transforming their practices of collaboration and communication. A draft report was issued in 2005 for public comment, the intended audience being the scholarly community and the societies that represent it, university provosts, federal funding agencies (including but not limited to the NSF), and private foundations.

The final report, Our Cultural Commonwealth: The report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, was released in the fall of 2006.

The ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences convened seven public information-gathering sessions to hear from those interested in contributing to the work of the commission. At these sessions, invited speakers, experts in various fields vital to this work—from those actively engaged in digital scholarship and teaching to leaders in libraries and archives, publishing and distribution, academic administration, information technology, and industry development—addressed questions on information technologies and its impact on humanists and social scientists.