The Challenge and The List

Conversations around the possibilities of finding intersections where liberal arts colleges might collaborate in deep and sustainable ways abound. As we survey the landscape of changing economic, political and social paradigms, the drivers for those conversations become increasingly evident. We want to identify, evaluate, and encourage further planning for potential collaborative efforts and to start defining a process by which these might come to pass.

Some of the ideas circulated in the initial planning for this session include:

1. shared ERP (very complicated but potentially huge)
2. shared collection development processes (also complicated, obviously)
3. shared data storage (via the cloud)
4. shared virtualized applications servers (also via the cloud)
5. shared subject-experts for reference and collection development and software support
6. shared digitization infrastructure
7. shared digital open access publishing platforms
8. shared help desk operation and support
9. shared policy development that lends strength thru multiple adoptions
10. shared cyberinfrastructure planning and support

We've loaded this list of 10 into a website at http://doteducloudward.uservoice.com/ where we would like those attending the NITLE Summit (and others who might care about such things) to vote on which of these they think have the best chance of actually happening.

At the session, we'll break out into smaller groups to discuss how to move forward on the top ideas.