Topic: Discovery and access
Blog Post
May 28, 2020
Project Launch: Canceling the Big Deal
Earlier this spring we announced that we were going to begin a new collaborative project on the impact of Big Deal cancellations on users, including their strategies for accessing content, and their perceptions of the library’s role in providing access. While at the time Ithaka S+R was only just beginning to anticipate the conditions universities and their libraries are facing now, it is already clear that the research is more important than ever. Ithaka S+R…
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 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.
Blog Post
March 4, 2020
Project Announcement: Cancelling the Big Deal
As Big Deal spending has come to occupy a greater and greater share of materials budgets, libraries are increasingly questioning the status quo of their Big Deal subscriptions. Recent years have seen a number of prominent cancellations, precipitated by questions about the value of the subscription materials. In 2020 we expect this trend to continue with libraries becoming increasingly assertive in their negotiating stance with publishers. This may yield some interesting compromise agreements,…
Past Event
April 23, 2020
Restructuring Library Consortia
Roger Schonfeld at the CRL Annual Meeting
On Thursday, April 23, at 11:15 am, Roger Schonfeld will deliver a talk on “Restructuring Library Consortia” at the CRL Annual Members Meeting in Chicago. For more information, please see the CRL website. About the meeting What risks and opportunities do library consortia face, and what is the future of collective enterprises for global information services? Today’s Center for Research Libraries represents a partnership among over 200 voting member institutions across the United States and Canada, an enduring model…
Blog Post
February 3, 2020
The Primacy of Print Is Past
OhioLINK recently shared its vision for the library system of the future in a white paper. That vision, developed by a group of library deans and directors whose work was facilitated by Ithaka S+R, involves two key elements that have garnered some attention for what they say about the future of the library and the work performed within it. The first element is centering the library system—just like the library itself—around the user. And the second involves enabling the…
Blog Post
January 30, 2020
Preprints in Biology and Medicine
ASAPbio Workshop and Roadmap
Preprint services have been getting a lot of attention recently. Last year saw a comprehensive review of the landscape by the Knowledge Exchange, two discussions at the Charleston Conference (why preprints, Hyde Park Debate), and a two-day preprints event organized by NISO. On January 20-21, the new decade opened with a preprints roadmap workshop…
Blog Post
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business: New Report Explores the Needs of Business Faculty
Today Ithaka S+R is releasing the first report in a new program focused on supporting teaching practices. In it, we explore the needs of faculty teaching undergraduate business. We started with business as it is consistently one of the most popular majors in the United States, and understanding the needs of faculty in this field can have a large impact on undergraduate teaching and learning. Informed by interviews with 158 business…
Research Report
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business
Looking at the Support Needs of Instructors
Business represents the most popular undergraduate major at American colleges and universities and was seen as the ideal discipline to begin with, especially as the potential number of students to be positively impacted is correspondingly large. The goal of this report, therefore, is to provide actionable findings for organizations, institutions, and professionals who support the teaching practices of business educators. This report describes the teaching practices of business instructors, both those that are common to all college level instruction as…
Blog Post
December 10, 2019
Perspectives on the 2018 US Faculty Survey in Against the Grain
Every three years when we release findings from our national faculty surveys, we receive a plethora of reactions and responses to the results. There was no exception when we released the 2018 results in conjunction with the ACRL conference in April 2019. While these high-level quantitative results offer strong evidence toward understanding faculty practices and perspectives, particularly for tracking change over time, many who work in academic libraries, learned societies, and…
Blog Post
December 5, 2019
What Are the Larger Implications of Ex Libris Buying Innovative?
Earlier today, news began leaking out that Ex Libris will purchase Innovative Interfaces, one of its largest competitors. The deal, which is expected to close in early 2020, further cements Ex Libris as the leader in the library systems marketplace and can be expected to put added pressure on OCLC. It will also raise concerns about Ex Libris’s dominant market position. Library Systems Ex Libris’s core business is in library systems,…
Past Event
December 9, 2019
Data Sharing from the Ground Up
Danielle Cooper and Rebecca Springer at CNI
On Monday, December 9, 2019, at 2:30 pm, Danielle Cooper and Rebecca Springer will present on “Data Sharing from the Ground Up: Building Data Communities” at the CNI Fall Meeting in Washington DC. For more information and to register for the conference, please see the CNI website. Abstract There is a growing consensus that research can progress more quickly, more innovatively, and more rigorously when scholars share data with each other. Policies and supports for data sharing…
Past Event
November 19, 2019
The Future of Content Distribution: Licensing or Leakage
Roger Schonfeld Moderates SSP Webinar
On Tuesday, November 19, at 11:00 am, Roger Schonfeld is moderating an SSP webinar, “The Future of Content Distribution: Licensing or Leakage.” Speakers for the webinar include Jonathan Austin, Director of Product Management at Springer Nature, Todd Toler, Vice President of Product Strategy & Partnerships at John Wiley & Sons, and Elaine Westbrooks, Vice Provost for University Libraries & University Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more information about the webinar and to register, please…
Blog Post
October 31, 2019
Three Questions for Mark McBride
SUNY central system administration and its 64 campus libraries have been working with Ithaka S+R to develop strategies for collaboration and partnership in the context of substantial strategic and technological change. For our most recent newsletter, we spoke with Mark McBride, senior strategist in SUNY’s Office of Library and Information Services, about how this is unfolding across the system and why he thinks it is so important. What did you learn from Ithaka S+R’s analysis of publishing across SUNY’s…
Blog Post
September 19, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight III
An Interview with Kitty Emery and Rob Guralnick on ZooArchNet
Successful data sharing crosses disciplinary silos. As Danielle Cooper and I argued in a recent issue brief, “data communities” — formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other — emerge both within and across disciplinary boundaries. In order to understand how these data communities emerge — and to understand how they can best be supported — I’ve been seeking out leaders who are at the…
Blog Post
July 22, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight
An Interview with Dr. Vance Lemmon on Spinal Cord Injury Research
Encouraging scholars to share research data with one another promises to increase research efficiency, reproducibility, and innovation. In a recent issue brief, Danielle Cooper and I argued for a new conceptual framework for understanding and supporting research data sharing: data communities. Data communities are formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other, regardless of disciplinary…
Blog Post
July 17, 2019
Gearing Up for the Ithaka S+R National Library Director Survey
This fall, we will field the triennial Ithaka S+R Library Survey for the fourth time. The survey examines strategy and leadership issues from the perspective of academic library deans and directors, and through this project, we aim to understand the opportunities and challenges they face in leading their organizations. This project serves as a strong complement to our work with a variety of other communities of academic librarians and is intended to ensure…
Blog Post
June 6, 2019
Legacy Missions in Times of Change
New Issue Brief on Library Collections
Regardless of the rapidly changing information and technology landscape, collections continue to be at the heart of academic libraries, signifying their role in providing access to our cultural heritage. But in an increasingly networked, distributed, licensed environment, how do we define the library collection? What do collections imply? What is involved in building a collection? The purpose of the brief…