Instrumenting an Agile Data Ecosystem for Intelligent Infrastructure Research, Education, and Development

ABSTRACT This research investigated the transformative landscape of Virginia Tech in developing the “Beyond Boundaries” transdisciplinary area of Intelligent Infrastructure for Human Centered Communities. Situated within this ongoing innovation of academic enterprise, this study further explored how academic libraries should transform the data environments to develop an adaptive and integrative data ecosystem for intelligent infrastructure research, education, and development. It draws upon a mixed-methods approach combining ethnographic participant observation, document analysis, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. The findings present a system view and practical roadmap for engineering an organic and robust data ecosystem for both research and learning, from building a data system around intelligent infrastructure R&D outputs to fostering data exploration for academic-industrial collaborations, and from launching data challenges for hands-on, minds-on learning to embedding education of multiple and emergent literacies. Grounded in socio-technical framework and framed around the mutual shaping of human-technology interaction, the results provide and discuss practical implications and strategic actions for academic libraries that are determined to innovate in the age of “smartness.”