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Topic: Digital scholarship and data management

Research Report
December 1, 2021

Big Data Infrastructure at the Crossroads

Support Needs and Challenges for Universities

Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services program explores current trends and support needs in academic research. Our most recent project in this program, “Supporting Big Data Research,” focused specifically on the rapidly emerging use of big data in research across disciplines and fields. As part of our study, we partnered with librarians from more than 20 colleges and universities, who then conducted over 200 interviews with faculty. These interviews provided insights into the research methodologies and support needs of researchers working…
Past Event
December 7, 2021

Deanna Marcum and Roger Schonfeld at CNI’s Fall 2021 Membership Meeting

On December 7th at 1:30 pm (EST), Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld will discuss their new book, “Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization” at CNI’s Fall 2021 Membership Meeting. “Along Came Google” is  the first in-depth study of the move to digitize collections of books at scale, tracing this work through the Google Books program and the creation of HathiTrust. This series of efforts have been of central concern to CNI’s work and took on new importance…
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…
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…
Past Event
October 26, 2021

Putting the Tri-Agency Policy into Practice

Danielle Cooper presents at Portage

On October 26, Danielle Cooper will present on the development of institutional research data management (RDM) strategies during a workshop series hosted by Portage.
Past Event
September 8, 2021

Danielle Cooper at FORGE 2021

On September 8  at 14:00 Central European Time (CET), Danielle Cooper will discuss her research on research data in the humanities. For more information, please visit this website. …
Blog Post
August 5, 2021

Deadline Extended: Call for Proposals on Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science

Ithaka S+R is currently accepting applications from researchers interested in participating in Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science, an NSF-funded workshop developed in partnership with the Data Curation Network. Participants will receive funding to attend a two-day incubation workshop in 2022, as well as expert guidance from information professionals about how to create sustainable infrastructures to support voluntary data sharing across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Applications are due October 1, 2021. Please see the following CFP for full…
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
May 20, 2021

Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science

New NSF-Funded Collaboration between Ithaka S+R and the Data Curation Network

We are excited to announce that Ithaka S+R has been awarded grant funding from the National Science Foundation to support the development of infrastructures for data sharing within data communities in collaboration with the Data Curation Network.  “Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science,” will bring together scientists and information technology professionals for focused discussions about initiating and sustaining data communities.  A unique opportunity to leverage data communities…
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
April 20, 2021

Emergent Data Community Spotlight

An Interview About Energy Modeling with the Open Energy Modelling Initiative

Fostering data and code sharing among scholars is an important component to fostering a culture of open research—but how can this work be done most effectively? At Ithaka S+R we are exploring the crucial contextual elements that optimize research data sharing. We’ve found that data communities—formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other regardless of disciplinary boundaries—provide important clues to understanding how research data sharing works. Identifying and supporting scholarly communities…
Blog Post
March 25, 2021

The State of the Humanities

Notes from the National Humanities Alliance Annual Meeting

Each spring, the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) organizes an annual meeting and an accompanying national advocacy day, in which representatives from most states meet with congressional offices to make the case for federal funding of the humanities. In 2020, 184 individuals representing 41 states held 287 meetings with congressional offices on Capitol Hill. Ithaka S+R is committed to supporting humanists in their work, through projects such as measuring the value of a liberal arts education, the analysis of the…
Blog Post
March 23, 2021

Teaching with Primary Sources: Pre-Pandemic Lessons for Post-COVID Futures

The second iteration in Ithaka S+R’s Teaching Support Services project investigates the teaching practices and support needs of instructors who work with primary source materials. Today we are excited to publish the project’s capstone report. Still in the pandemic but beginning to glimpse life on the other side, now is an opportune time to begin to envision not just the future, but the many potential futures…
Blog Post
March 23, 2021

Relationships Matter

How participation in the Teaching with Primary Sources Study Helped Strengthen and Develop Cross-Campus Relationships

Ithaka S+R’s capstone report on teaching with primary sources was published today. To coincide with its release, we invited one of the project’s local research teams to reflect on their experience participating in the project and how they are building on the project’s findings. Why did we want to participate in Ithaka S+R’s Teaching with Primary Sources Project?  In 2019, Ithaka S+R invited Washington & Lee University (W&L) Library to participate…
Research Report
March 23, 2021

Teaching with Primary Sources

Looking at the Support Needs of Instructors

Encounters with primary sources—historical or contemporary artifacts that bear direct witness to a specific period or event—are central to the pedagogy of many disciplines, especially in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Their use in undergraduate instruction aligns with universities’ commitments to experiential and inquiry-based learning and library initiatives focused on media and information literacy. Reflecting the importance of the topic within higher education, “Supporting Teaching with Primary Sources” attracted the largest cohort of any Ithaka S+R program to date.
Blog Post
March 8, 2021

Three Questions for Ithaka S+R’s Newest Analysts

In January, we welcomed three new analysts to our team. In this interview, they reflect on what brought them to Ithaka S+R and what they hope to accomplish through their work with us. What attracted you to Ithaka S+R?  Darnell Epps: I found the work around college in prison to be quite appealing, especially the goal of advancing educational equity through technology. Although I would later matriculate and graduate from Cornell University, the first…
Past Event
February 24, 2021

Oya Rieger at NISO Plus 2021

On February 24, 2021, Oya Y. Rieger will discuss with other panelists the new model of Controlled Digital Lending at NISO Plus 2021, a global event which will  bring together the information community and facilitate conversations between  librarians, publishers, vendor organizations, and more. To register for panel, please visit this website. On February 25, 2021, Oya will also present on how digital preservation systems are developed, deployed, and sustained and will share initial…
Blog Post
January 28, 2021

Convening the Cohort

Teaching with Digital Cultural Heritage Materials in the Pandemic

Last summer we announced a Mellon funded project to study how higher education instructors are adapting their practices of teaching with cultural heritage materials during the pandemic. In this post we share how our project is developing and the issues we are tracking as our research gets underway. Why are we doing this project? We remain in a similarly unprecedented landscape six months later, as the COVID-19 virus remains a terrible threat. Technology has allowed certain types of activities…
Past Event
February 17, 2021

Danielle Cooper at the Open Science Conference

On Wednesday, February 17, Danielle Cooper is presenting on “Data Communities: Data Sharing from the Ground Up,” at the Open Science Conference. For more information and to register, please visit the conference website.  Abstract This talk proposes a new mechanism for conceptualizing and supporting STEM research data sharing. Successful data sharing happens within data communities, formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of…
Blog Post
January 12, 2021

Data Repository Platforms: A Primer

Last updated on March 10, 2021 While scholars generally believe in the value of sharing and preserving research datasets, many do not believe it’s worth their time to do so. And, when they do invest their time in data sharing and preservation, they tend to have a preference for doing so in an independent and self-reliant fashion. These are issues that we have not only documented through our long-standing national faculty survey but ones that we have…