The Digital Library Federation (DLF) convened a scholars' advisory panel in Washington, D.C. in early June. The gathering, of more than a dozen humanities scholars from universities and archival institutions around the country, was co-chaired by the DLF's David Seaman, and the IU's David Greenbaum.

The meeting grew out of a desire to learn from working scholars what they value and what they need from digital library services; it was conceived and planned as a forum to assess the library and archival community's current understandings of how expectations of library users might differentiate from the expressed needs of scholars.

Each scholar who was part of the panel is actively engaged in creating and using digital library content, often in partnership with an academic library. Among the institutions represented were: Michigan State University; Johns Hopkins University; the Thomas Jefferson Papers; the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; the University of Rochester; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Virginia; and George Mason University.

Among the fields of scholarship represented, there were professors of: Italian, French, English, American Studies, Middle East Studies, Sociology, New Media, Religious Studies, and several Historians.