Topic: Collections and preservation
Blog Post
March 2, 2022
The A*CENSUS II: Archives Administrators Survey is Live
The A*CENSUS II: Archives Administrators Survey launched this week! In 2004, the original A*CENSUS broke ground by surveying archivists from across the country. It had a tremendous impact on the archives profession. The findings empowered archival institutions to advocate for resources and benchmark against peers, allowed researchers to study trends in the workforce, and informed curricula and educational offerings by academic institutions and professional organizations. A*CENSUS II builds upon the foundation of the original…
Research Report
March 1, 2022
Teaching with Cultural Heritage Materials During the Pandemic
Cultural heritage materials can offer rewarding learning opportunities and impactful experiences for students across a variety of disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences. These learning opportunities create important historical and/or cultural context within a discipline, allowing students to deepen their engagement with a discipline, or see themselves, perhaps for the first time, as a scholar. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the attendant move to online instruction at many colleges and universities, disrupted pedagogical practices and the ways that…
Blog Post
January 18, 2022
Ithaka S+R is Growing: Join Us!
Over the past few years, the scope and breadth of Ithaka S+R’s work has grown substantially. The Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums program has seen increases in cohort projects that explore critical issues facing libraries; grant funded initiatives focused on digital preservation, higher education in prison, student success, and museum leadership; national surveys of faculty, community college administrators, and archivists; and sponsored work on topics including the health of the research enterprise and diversifying collections. To…
Blog Post
January 5, 2022
Providing Library Services for Higher Education in Prison
An Interview with Jessica Licklider and Jeannie Colson
In a previous blog post I interviewed Jeanie Austin of the San Francisco Public Library about their new book on providing library services to incarcerated people. With the restoration of Pell funding for incarcerated students set to take place in 2023, the field of higher education in prison (HEP) is currently grappling with how to prepare for this long-awaited expansion of funding and opportunity, and academic libraries that wish to serve this student group must likewise prepare to meet…
Blog Post
December 20, 2021
Leading by Diversifying Collections
Announcing a New Project to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Academic Libraries
As academic libraries seek to meaningfully engage with calls to improve practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) it is important that the library’s collections align with that mission. Yet, Ithaka S+R’s recent survey of library directors found that most libraries have not developed criteria for evaluating and making decisions related to the diversity of their collections. A library-wide strategy for diversifying collections also involves leveraging staff and resources in new ways…
Past Event
December 2, 2021
Book Talk: Along Came Google
Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld in conversation with Brewster Kahle
On December 2 at 4:00 pm (EST), the Internet Archive is hosting a virtual book talk with Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld about their new book, Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization. Deanna and Roger will be joined in conversation by Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, as they discuss the history of library digitization projects and what these efforts hold for future scholars. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A.
Blog Post
November 11, 2021
Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research
An Interview with the Authors of Two New Books
Creating meaningful learning encounters with primary sources involves dynamic collaboration between instructors and those who work with cultural heritage collections, including librarians, archivists, and museum professionals. Here at Ithaka S+R we have been engaging in a series of studies in collaboration with academic libraries, archives, and museums to understand instructors’ support needs in this area, including how to support their teaching with digital cultural heritage materials as classes went remote during the pandemic. In addition to understanding instructors’ experiences…
Blog Post
October 21, 2021
Working with Libraries to Navigate the Streaming Media Environment
The ascendancy of the streaming format has implications for how educational content is used and purchased within universities, even if universities do not appear to be a priority market for media providers. The pedagogical possibilities for streaming content extend far beyond access to feature films and documentaries, providing, for instance, the opportunity to access a wide variety of academic conference presentations, or observe lab demonstrations. Within universities, academic libraries are taking…
Blog Post
October 20, 2021
The A*CENSUS II: All Archivists Survey is Live
The A*CENSUS II: All Archivists Survey launched this week! This is the first broadscale survey of individual archivists and memory workers in the United States in 17 years. Nearly six thousand archivists participated in the original A*CENSUS in 2004, and the overwhelming response allowed the findings to be leveraged across the field in a myriad of ways. For institutions and professional organizations, the data informed the design of new curricula and the assessment of educational offerings; for archival institutions, the…
Past Event
October 20, 2021
Oya Y. Rieger at iPRES2021
On October 20, Rieger will join other panelists to provide insights from on implementations of current preservation tools and to consider the opportunities in deploying and integrating these tools with local digital content management processes. Please see abstract below: Abstract As cultural heritage organizations seek solutions, open source, community-based, and commercial digital preservation systems and tools have proliferated. Nevertheless, given the magnitude of digital content and the requirements of specific file formats, institutions struggle to integrate disparate tools and…
Blog Post
August 4, 2021
New Questionnaire for the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2021 Now Available
We’re excited to announce that we have now finalized updates for the 2021 edition of the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey, which we will be fielding nationally and with a number of college and university partners this fall. As with previous cycles of the survey, the instrument will explore the research, teaching, and publishing practices and perspectives of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. We have also expanded several areas of coverage within the questionnaire to cover instructional support services,…
Blog Post
July 26, 2021
SAA 2021 Annual Meeting
What to Watch For
Next month, archivists from across the country will convene virtually to discuss emerging and ongoing issues in the field at the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Annual Meeting, ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2021: Together/Apart. This year’s meeting will take place from August 4 to 6 (with some pre-conference activities earlier in the week) and will showcase 10 live sessions and 20 pre-recorded sessions with live Q&As. The conference will feature keynote speakers, general sessions, networking opportunities,…
Past Event
August 5, 2021
Makala Skinner at SAA’s ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2021
On August 5 and 6, join Makala Skinner to learn more about the A*CENSUS survey, which is a large scale census of archivists. The details for each session are below: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT on Thursday, August 5 Conversation Lounge: Research and Innovation @ SAA: A*CENSUS II SAA has received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to conduct a major research initiative: the second large-scale census of archivists. A lot has changed…
Blog Post
July 20, 2021
Making Streaming Media Sustainable for Academic Libraries
Launching a New Cohort-Based Collaborative Project
There has been an explosion of interest in streaming media marketed for educational purposes in recent years, and the shift to remote instruction during the pandemic has further accelerated that interest. This growing significance is also reflected in its overall share of library collections budgets: recent Ithaka S+R research found that streaming media currently represents about five percent of those budgets and that academic library directors across a diverse array of institutions project that this…
Blog Post
July 14, 2021
Why Survey Testing is Essential
Preparing to Field the US Faculty Survey 2021
Ithaka S+R is gearing up for our eighth launch of the US Faculty Survey this fall. This national survey has yielded longitudinal data on scholarly research and teaching behaviors across a variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts on a triennial basis since 2000. To maximize the value of this initiative for higher education leaders, scholarly societies, academic libraries, and publishers who have come to rely on these data, especially in light of the…
Blog Post
June 22, 2021
New Report: What’s the Big Deal?
How Researchers Are Navigating Changes to Journal Access
Since 1996, the “Big Deal” has enabled academic libraries of all sizes to license bundled access to a publisher’s journal at a significant discount off the list prices. Over the years, as Big Deal spending has come to occupy a greater and greater share of materials budgets, libraries have come to question the value of their Big Deal subscriptions, with some opting to cancel or significantly alter their existing arrangements. Today we are thrilled to announce a…
Blog Post
June 22, 2021
Cancelling the Big Deal Project Spotlight
An Interview with Freie Universität Berlin with contributions from Dominik Hagel, Franziska Harnisch, Mario Kowalak, and Cosima Wagner
As university budgets face considerable strain and new models for providing open access to scholarly communication proliferate, academic libraries are increasingly pursuing alternatives to the “Big Deal” journal subscription model, including cancellation. But how are these strategies affecting researchers and what do they make of them? Over the past year Ithaka S+R has been studying the impact of Big Deal cancellations on its users in partnership with 11 academic libraries. Previous research has focused primarily on…
Research Report
June 22, 2021
What’s the Big Deal?
How Researchers Are Navigating Changes to Journal Access
The dominant mode by which research libraries have provided maximum journal access as cheaply as possible—subscription bundles or “Big Deals”—is giving way to new approaches. This transition is taking place through a combination of negotiations, activism, business modeling, user needs research, and decision support, among other factors. To support these processes, Ithaka S+R partnered with 11 academic libraries to understand researcher perceptions to help inform their ongoing strategic decision making about Big Deal journal subscriptions.
Blog Post
May 13, 2021
Archiving the Black Web 2021
Black culture is regularly marginalized in institutional libraries and archives. This phenomenon has been replicated virtually with the introduction of digital technologies and social media, and is in stark contrast with how Black users drive digital trends. For the past decade or more, a growing community from technical, academic, and cultural backgrounds have built a new discipline of study around research and practice in this space (the Black Web) so that Black culture online could receive the same—or better—attention and…
Blog Post
May 13, 2021
Announcing the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2021
This fall, we are looking forward to fielding our triennial US Faculty Survey. This will be the eighth cycle of this long-standing research initiative through which we examine faculty research and teaching perspectives and practices across a variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts. Through this ongoing work, we have now mapped for over two decades the evolving attitudes and behaviors of scholars on a range of topics, including the discovery and access of scholarship, research dissemination and preservation, instructional methods…