Topic: Digital scholarship and data management
Blog Post
November 18, 2020
Counting Research Data Services
How many, and what kinds, of research data services do US higher education institutions offer? Where are these services located within institutional structures? How do different types of colleges and universities differ in research data service provision? Academic institutions are in a data arms race, vying to produce cutting-edge, data-driven research across a wide range of disciplines. But the provision of research data services— support offerings which enable and improve data research…
Research Report
November 18, 2020
Research Data Services in US Higher Education
As data-driven research methods proliferate and become more sophisticated across disciplines, supporting researchers who work with data is increasingly a top priority for academic institutions. However, research data services—support offerings which enable and improve data research—are currently provided in an ad hoc manner by a variety of campus units, including libraries, academic departments and institutes, labs, and IT or research computing units. And the provision of research data services varies significantly from campus to campus. For data-driven research to thrive,…
Blog Post
November 2, 2020
Five New Higher Ed Datasets Now Available from Ithaka S+R
Over the years, Ithaka S+R has routinely deposited datasets from our research projects with the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, better known by its acronym of ICPSR. In doing so, this ensures that our data is not only digitally preserved, enabling long-term access, but also thoroughly processed and made available in a variety of formats for download. Several new datasets from our research projects have recently become available in our…
Blog Post
September 9, 2020
Supporting Language and Literature Scholarship in the COVID-19 Era
The latest installment in Ithaka S+R’s series of Research Support Services projects investigates the research practices and support needs of scholars in the field of languages and literature. Today we are excited to publish the project’s capstone report. The research that underlies this report was conducted prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we believe our findings resonate now more than ever. The field…
Research Report
September 9, 2020
Supporting Research in Languages and Literature
Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services program investigates how the research support needs of scholars vary by discipline. From 2018 to early 2020, Ithaka S+R examined the changing research methods and practices of language and literature scholars in the United States with the goal of identifying services to better support them. The goal of this report is to provide actionable findings for the organizations, institutions, and professionals who support the research processes of language and literature scholars.
Blog Post
August 31, 2020
Conducting Virtual Focus Groups
A Short Methodology Case Study for Social Scientists
In June of 2020, Ithaka S+R conducted 18 synchronous exploratory virtual focus groups with 46 undergraduate students and 37 faculty, to assist a higher education institution in learning from its emergency transition to online learning during the spring 2020 term due to Covid-19. We will publish our findings, a time capsule of a university community’s rapid adaptation in response to COVID-19, in a public report later this year. To conduct these focus groups in the midst of the pandemic, we,…
Blog Post
August 19, 2020
Exploring the Effectiveness and Durability of Digital Preservation and Curation Services
Announcing a New Research Project Funded by IMLS
With generous funding from the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS), we are pleased to initiate an 18-month research project to examine and assess how digital preservation and curation systems (DPCS) are developed, deployed, and sustained. Because our cultural, historic, and scientific heritage is increasingly being produced and shared in digital forms, libraries, archives, and museums are increasingly dependent on digital platforms to support the curation, discovery, and long-term management of digital…
Blog Post
August 17, 2020
Teaching with Cultural Heritage Online During the Pandemic
New Mellon-Funded Project
Today we are excited to announce a new project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that will explore how teaching and learning with cultural heritage collections and materials is evolving in response to the pandemic. Instructors who seek to use cultural heritage objects from museums, archives, and special collections face unique challenges when adapting to remote teaching. What is needed is deeper understanding of, and better support for these instructors in this current moment. This…
Blog Post
July 8, 2020
What about Research? Scholarship and COVID-19
While there have been a number of research initiatives centered on supporting faculty in shifting to virtual instruction in light of the COVID-19 pandemic—and deservedly so—we have learned far less about the challenges that faculty are facing as researchers during this disruptive time. Back in March, our colleague Danielle Cooper speculated on the ways that “technologies at hand” could partially alleviate disruptions to research, and…
Blog Post
June 30, 2020
Why Stakeholder Engagement Matters More than Ever
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, academic libraries have experienced unprecedented change. For many libraries, anticipated budget reductions, the realities of remote work, and responsibilities related to rapid campus closures and tentative reopenings have put a strain on resources. At the same time, libraries have new opportunities to play a prominent role on campus in supporting online learning and helping researchers work…
Blog Post
June 1, 2020
Data Communities in the Health Sciences
A Webinar with the Long Island Library Resources Council
Data sharing in the health sciences has never seemed more urgent. The National Institutes of Health, the US’s major health science research funder, has been experimenting with ways to promote data sharing. Additionally, the race to combat COVID-19 has brought the urgency of making patient-level clinical data, as well as other types of health-related data, easily accessible to researchers while still maintaining individual privacy. Against this backdrop, Danielle Cooper and I had the…
Blog Post
May 27, 2020
Speeding Up the Dissemination of Scholarly Information
New Issue Brief on Preprints
Preprints have been getting a lot of attention recently. Since the pandemic, dozens of articles have appeared in the scientific and popular press about both the role of preprints in accelerating scientific communications and the associated concerns, including in venues such as New York Times, Bloomberg, Economist, Mother Jones. Ten years ago when I became the…
Blog Post
May 14, 2020
Launching Two Projects on Supporting Data Work
Last summer we announced that we were going to begin two new collaborative projects on data, one focused on teaching, and one on research. While we couldn’t have anticipated then the conditions we are facing now, we believe the research is more important than ever. The first project will examine instructors’ support needs teaching with data in the social sciences, while the second project will study the support needs of researchers who work…
Blog Post
May 6, 2020
Shared Heritage, Shared Responsibility
African Memory Institutions and the Response to COVID-19
The implications and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic can vary greatly depending on demographic, political, social, cultural and economic factors. Therefore the regional documentation initiatives–now being undertaken by cultural heritage institutions throughout the world–are essential to capturing local circumstances and experiences. This work is vital to help future generations understand the extent of the pandemic and its vast impact. To this end, and in collaboration with several international preservation advocacy organizations, UNESCO recently made a public…
Blog Post
April 30, 2020
Leading a Library Today
How Library Directors Are Approaching the Challenges of the Current Moment
Over the past two weeks, Ithaka S+R has organized five roundtables for academic library leaders to help support their leadership during this time of disruption and uncertainty. In total, 40 library directors and two associate university librarians attended these sessions, representing every four-year institutional type. Participants introduced themselves by describing what has been working well for their libraries, the challenges they are facing, and their budgetary expectations. The discussion that followed–with minimum facilitation–then focused on the participants’ most…
Blog Post
April 14, 2020
Technologies at Hand
On Researcher Practices During a Pandemic
On March 25 I had the privilege of giving the introductory talk to NISO’s virtual conference on Research Behaviors and the Impact of Technology. The relationship between research behaviors and technology is a topic I have a birdseye view on through my work at Ithaka S+R, where I oversee a program examining scholars’ research practices discipline-by-discipline and we conduct a US-wide faculty survey triennially. The event was always already virtual and I found myself preparing amidst the…
Blog Post
April 6, 2020
Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic
Archiving the Present for Future Research
As we go through the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, we are inundated by articles, images, video, statistics, and graphs through our handhelds and desktops coming from a variety of channels–including social media, news outlets, journals, and preprints. The sources of information expand from governmental agencies to research institutions, from policy makers to advocacy groups. And now archivists and others are asking how we can archive these rich and diverse sources of information–not only for future generations but also for…
Blog Post
April 2, 2020
The Latest US Library Survey
Since 2010, Ithaka S+R has fielded its triennial survey of academic library directors to track evolving strategies and priorities across the sector. Today we release findings from the 2019 survey cycle, which was fielded from October to December 2019. Much has obviously changed in the world since then. Most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the plans of not only academic libraries but higher education as a whole. As we face an uncertain future,…
Research Report
April 2, 2020
Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2019
Every three years Ithaka S+R conducts our Library Survey to track the changing strategic directions and priorities of the deans and directors of academic libraries. The data are gathered during a relatively brief window of approximately four weeks. In the case of this most recent survey cycle, that moment in time was the fall of 2019, well before any of us had heard of COVID-19.
Past Event
March 25, 2020
Researcher Behaviors and the Impact of Technology
Danielle Cooper Speaks at Virtual NISO Conference
On Wednesday, March 25, Danielle Cooper is presenting at NISO’s virtual conference on Researcher Behaviors and the Impact of Technology. Her talk, “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication: Accessible, Ubiquitous Technologies & Their Affordances for Research,” is from 12:15-12:45. For more information on the conference, please see NISO’s website. About the presentation When we think of what technologies have the potential to drive research forward our minds often alight to exciting new developments that…