Topic: Cross-institutional collaboration
Blog Post
December 13, 2016
Lessons for Scholarly Communication from The Next Wave 2016
Since taking part in ITHAKA’s The Next Wave 2016 a few weeks ago, I have been reflecting on what I heard and what it means for the libraries and publishers we work with every day. As higher education changes to meet the needs of 21st century students, libraries and publishers must also adapt. Here are just a few of the big takeaways from my perspective. We need to align behind student success. The student is no longer the 18-22-year…
Blog Post
December 13, 2016
Joining Together to Expand Access and Opportunity
Introducing the American Talent Initiative
Thirty of the nation’s most respected colleges and universities today announced a new venture to substantially expand the number of talented low- and moderate-income students at America’s undergraduate institutions with the highest graduation rates. Coordinated by Ithaka S+R and the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program and supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the American Talent Initiative (ATI) brings together a diverse set of public and private institutions to ensure that talented young people from every zip code…
Blog Post
November 16, 2016
Breaking the Luxury Barrier
On Fostering Exploratory Qualitative Research in Libraries
How should qualitative research be incorporated into a library’s research agenda? In the latest issue of Weave: Journal of Library Experience “provocateur anthropologists” Donna Lanclos and Andrew Asher reflect on the state of ethnographic research in libraries, which they characterize as more “ethnographish” than ethnographic. Some of the trappings of ethnographish library research include that the projects are: smaller scale, rely on “pre-packaged” methods, and aim towards solving institution-specific problems. In contrast, drawing on their experiences as…
Blog Post
October 20, 2016
Four Strategic Essentials for Institution-Wide Improvement in Student Success
Over the past decade, colleges and universities have faced increasing pressure to improve degree completion rates and demonstrate their value to students. At the same time, evidence has accumulated about efficacy of a number of structural and pedagogical changes institutions can make to help students succeed. Tactics including remedial course redesign, proactive advising and coaching, active learning pedagogies incorporating technology, and guided pathways now have a solid research base. Yet despite this great motivation and the availability of evidence-supported practices,…
Blog Post
June 28, 2016
With Support of Third Parties, Aiming for Impact in Diversity Research
Over the past two years, Ithaka S+R has had the opportunity to conduct several projects that study issues of equity, inclusion, and especially representative diversity, in the cultural and academic sectors. A recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education raised troubling questions about the diversity efforts at one major university, which it described as stuck in a “perpetual loop: Form a committee in reaction to a crisis, pledge to diversify the faculty,…
Blog Post
May 18, 2016
A “How To” Guide to Effective Transfer Pathways
While a large majority of community college students aspire to a bachelor’s degree, only 14 percent will earn one within six years. But that deeply disappointing overall statistic hides a lot of variation: in some contexts, the pathway through two-year and four-year colleges to a bachelor’s degree is a much easier one. Often, the difference is not the students themselves or the resources, but how institutions work with students and one another, and the priorities to which resources are allocated.
Blog Post
May 16, 2016
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within Academic Libraries
Announcing a New Research Project
Diversity, equity, and inclusiveness are vital issues for society in the United States and beyond. National policy discussions have catalyzed concerns that our higher education institutions are not providing the leadership on these issues that we would like to see. Ithaka S+R is today announcing our latest project examining diversity in cultural organizations, this time focusing on academic libraries. The Spring 2016 ARL meeting provided ample evidence of the importance…
Blog Post
May 5, 2016
Announcing the Public Health Project
Many libraries have special expertise in particular disciplines, and they build services and collections to support researchers in those fields. But as research practices evolve, are libraries addressing the changing needs of their users? Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services program is designed to help libraries re-imagine their services for scholars on a discipline-by-discipline basis. Through the program, we have explored the needs of researchers in chemistry, history, and art history, and projects focused on religious…
Research Report
April 27, 2016
Diversity in the New York City Dance Community
Foreword by Leah Krauss, Senior Program Officer for Dance and Special Projects, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and Lane Harwell, Executive Director, Dance/NYC Creating an inclusive and equitable workforce in dance and culture, as in any industry, requires baseline demographic data to guide action and measure progress over time. Commissioned by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, this report by Ithaka S+R furthers the movement to create equity in dance by shedding light on the gender and racial makeup of the dance workforce, both…
Issue Brief
April 26, 2016
Due Diligence and Stewardship in a Time of Change and Uncertainty
This Issue Brief has been adapted from Deanna Marcum’s keynote address at the CRL Collections Forum held in Chicago on April 14, 2016.[1] For as long as humankind has been recording thoughts and ideas, we have been concerned about the technologies and processes that will ensure preservation of those records. Consider Cassiodorus, a high official in the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy in the Sixth Century, AD, who wrote about the invention of papyrus with all of the enthusiasm…
Blog Post
April 20, 2016
Responsible Use of Student Data
For several months, my colleagues and I at Ithaka S+R have been working with Mitchell Stevens, a professor at Stanford, on a project addressing the uses, challenges and opportunities for colleges and universities undertaking new forms of research, application, and representation of student administrative and learning data. Students’ increasing interaction with learning management systems, instructional technology, and administrative platforms is creating reams of new data about their learning behaviors and outcomes, and other experiences in school. And rapidly developing…
Blog Post
February 23, 2016
Is Completion the Right Goal? The Public Wouldn’t Agree
The results of Ithaka S+R’s first Higher Ed Insights survey, released yesterday, provide a rich set of information about the views of a group of people deeply immersed in the sector. In full disclosure, I was one of the survey’s respondents, and the questions encouraged me to ponder and articulate my views on a number of important issues and trends, as I’m sure they did for others. One thing that struck me about the survey and its results was…
Blog Post
January 28, 2016
Looking at Diversity Across Cultural Institutions in New York City
Diversity and inclusion are of substantial importance across our society. In recent years, Ithaka S+R has had the opportunity to conduct research projects on these issues in our cultural communities. Last year, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation commissioned Ithaka S+R to conduct a large-scale study of the demographic diversity of art museum staff. Today, we release the findings from a similar study of New York City cultural organizations. In this project, funded by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation…
Research Report
January 28, 2016
Diversity in the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Community
New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the United States at a city level, ranking fourth in the country based on 2010 census data.[1] There are over 1,000 cultural organizations in the five boroughs, each with specific ties to communities, each with vastly different organizational structures and sizes, and each integral to the diversity of culture that defines New York City. Over the summer of 2015 many of these organizations participated in a survey…
Blog Post
January 21, 2016
Love and Measurement: Online Learning in Small, Independent Colleges
Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and interim chairman of the department of medicine, University of California, San Francisco, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times on January 17 in which he argues that measurement in both the health care and education industries has failed us. He concludes by saying, “The secret of quality is love.” He worried that our efforts to measure and improve quality somehow block the altruism that motivates both doctors and teachers to do their…
Blog Post
January 19, 2016
Religious Studies Project Launch and Training Workshop
My colleague Roger Schonfeld and I launched the religious studies project at Pitts Theology Library at Emory University on January 7 and 8 with the first of two methods training workshops for our institutional collaborators. With funding from lead sponsor the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), as well as the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the religious studies project brings together local research teams from eighteen higher education institutions to investigate the…
Blog Post
December 22, 2015
Looking at the Research Needs of Religious Studies Scholars
This fall, Ithaka S+R announced plans for a series of new projects to examine the research practices of scholars in three diverse fields. These projects are being conducted in close partnership with scholarly societies and libraries and will provide valuable insight for libraries and other service providers of research support services. I am writing today with an update of the strong progress we are making on the first…
Blog Post
November 18, 2015
Understanding the Role of the Office of Scholarly Communication
Scholarly communication has become a standard feature of academic and research libraries, and a number of research libraries have established an office of scholarly communication as one of its organizational units. Harvard Library established an Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed the open access policy that would be followed by the other schools and institutes of Harvard. The OSC was meant to help the Harvard schools implement open access. The provost’s office at…
Research Report
November 18, 2015
Office of Scholarly Communication
Scope, Organizational Placement, and Planning in Ten Research Libraries
The phrase “scholarly communication” appears often in the description of library roles and responsibilities, but the function is still new enough that it takes different forms in different institutions. There is no common understanding of where it fits into the library’s organizational structure. This landscape review of offices of scholarly communication grows out of research originally conducted by Ithaka S+R for the Harvard Library. Dr. Sarah Thomas, Vice President for the Harvard Library, University Librarian and Roy E. Larsen Librarian…
Blog Post
November 16, 2015
Having the “Online Learning Discussion” with Faculty
Ithaka S+R has been working with the Council of Independent Colleges for nearly two years in creating a consortium for online learning in the humanities. We have written extensively about the project, in a previous blog post, a report on the findings after the first year of the program, and a case study in which we featured a few faculty from the project and their experiences with the program. Last week, the Council of Independent Colleges held…