Publications
Research Report
July 14, 2009
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library 2009
Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project (MSP2) aims to provide middle school teachers with high-quality materials they can use in the classroom, and to foster greater sharing and communication within the middle school teaching community. The original Middle School Portal was a prototype for the "Pathways" projects funded under the umbrella of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and MSP2 remains today entirely funded through NSDL. But the project faces a challenge: How will it cover…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
The National Archives (TNA) 2009
Digitisation with Commercial Partnerships via the Licensed Internet Associates Program
The challenges of digitizing, preserving and providing access to over 1,000 years’ worth of material held by The National Archives (TNA) are considerable. In recent years, TNA has developed a strategy to digitize content quickly though its Licensed Internet Associates program. These commercial partnerships, closely managed by TNA staff, have allowed the institution to digitize millions of pages of material at minimal direct cost. This case study explores the model developed by TNA in light of the opportunities that commercial…
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Research Report
July 14, 2009
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009
Building an Endowment with Community Support
Endowments are often thought of as a source of reliable support for established institutions such as universities and foundations, but in recent years online academic resources have also begun experimenting with the endowment model as a means of sustainable funding. The model holds forth the promise of guaranteeing access to a resource in perpetuity, with the investment returns from the endowment continuously generating funds to sustain the resource. Since 2004, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has successfully raised three-quarters of…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae® (TLG) 2009
Specialised Historical Content for a Niche Audience
Online resources are often described and evaluated in terms of their ability to serve vast amounts of diverse content to wide audiences, but well targeted, specialized digital projects can have a profound effect on an academic discipline. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®, a digital corpus of over 12,000 works of Greek literature ranging from the ancient era to the modern age, has proven its value to scholars and has been able to convert that value into a sustainability model that incorporates…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
V&A Images 2009
Image Licensing at a Cultural Heritage Institution
For many museums and cultural institutions, the digital environment provides an exciting opportunity to expand access to their collections and enhance their brand. At the same time, the high costs of creating and maintaining digital collections lead some organizations to think about ways to generate revenue from these assets. V&A Images, a department of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s commercial trading company, licenses photographs of objects in the museum's collection for commercial, educational and personal use. The unit is tasked…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
BOPCRIS Digitisation Centre 2009
Experimentation with Sustainability and Partnerships for Library Digitisation Projects
The University of Southampton’s Hartley Library has been engaged in a number of large scale, grant funded digitization initiatives focused on heritage materials such as parliamentary papers and British pamphlets. These projects left them with a challenge familiar to many grant-funded projects: developing a strategy to preserve access to the content after the grant period concluded. Early experiences suggested to library leadership that they were not well positioned to host this content locally, so with subsequent projects they began to…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Centre for Computing in the Humanities 2009
Leveraging Shared Infrastructure and Expertise to Develop Digital Projects in an Academic Department
The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London, an academic department focused on the advancement of the digital humanities, engages in a wide variety of research projects that often lead to the creation of electronic scholarly outputs. Using a model that is rare among humanities departments, CCH supplements government and institutional funding for research and teaching with a remarkable number of outside research grants and with revenue generated through knowledge transfer activities that leverage the department’s…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
DigiZeitschriften 2009
Library Partnership and a Subscription Model for a Journal Database
DigiZeitschriften, a German language archive of scholarly journals, was created in 1999 with funding from the German Research Foundation. Since its launch as an online service in 2005, DigiZeitschriften has implemented a sustainability model that includes a partnership of libraries contributing time and expertise, and a financial model of institutional subscriptions that has more than covered its operating costs to date. This case study examines the decisions leading DigiZeitschriften to adopt this plan for sustainability, and explores the benefits as…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
eBird 2009
A Two-sided Market for Academic Researchers and Enthusiasts
The Information Science Department at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is home to eBird, a site where birdwatchers of all levels–from weekenders to academic researchers–can record their avian sightings and upload them for future use by scientists. The site serves a two-sided market: on one side, the birders who record and share their observations, and on the other side, the scientists who use that data for research. This project is notable for the level of interest it generates from users;…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Sustaining Digital Resources
An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today
This research is part of a multi-year, international exploration of the strategies being used to support digital initiatives over the long term. In 2008, we selected twelve projects to examine, analyzing the steps their project leaders have taken to achieve sustainability, with special attention paid to their strategies for cost management and revenue generation. "Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today" serves as a guide to the cases, outlining the stages that successful projects undertake in developing sustainability…
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Research Report
November 1, 2008
Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication
The networked digital environment has enabled the creation of many new kinds of works that are accessible to end users directly, and many of these resources have become essential tools for scholars conducting research, building scholarly networks, and disseminating their ideas and work. The decentralized distribution of these new model works can make it difficult to fully appreciate their scope and number, even for university librarians tasked with knowing about valuable resources across the disciplines. In the spring of 2008,…
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Research Report
August 18, 2008
US Library Survey 2006
The Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2006 was developed as a complement to our Faculty Survey 2006, exploring the attitudes and practices of librarians on a variety of topics, including the role of the library in faculty research, the print to electronic transition for scholarly journals, and the increasing prominence of electronic resources in research and teaching. In 2006, for the first time, we sought to offer extensive comparison between the faculty attitudes and practices to the attitudes and perspectives of…
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Research Report
August 18, 2008
US Faculty Survey 2006
Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education
The Ithaka S+R 2006 Faculty Survey sought to determine faculty attitudes and behaviors related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning, and related subjects. This survey built on our 2000 and 2003 surveys queried faculty members at four-year colleges and universities across the United States on their attitudes and behaviors on a variety of topics, including the changing role played by the library in their research, their evolving dependence on print and electronic research resources, publishing and dissemination preferences,…
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Research Report
May 1, 2008
Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources
There is no single formula that Online Academic Resources (OARs) can apply to achieve sustainability, no ‘one-size-fits-all’ plan that any organization can follow to reach a point of financial stability. There are, however, a variety of processes and approaches that can help to improve the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. In an age when traditional content producers – including scholarly publishers and newspapers – struggle to maintain their financial footing in face of the challenges of the digital world, OARs cannot…
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Research Report
March 14, 2008
Scholarly Communications in the Education Discipline
In a series of projects, we were asked by JSTOR to examine scholarly communication practices in various disciplines. The goals of this work were to understand how research is conducted and disseminated in select disciplines, and to identify the importance of different scholarly resources. In this project, we focused on the field of education.
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Research Report
January 1, 2008
Digital preservation of ejournals in 2008: Urgent Action revisited
Results from a Portico/Ithaka Survey of U.S. Library Directors
The shift from print to electronic journals has raised significant challenges for libraries as they consider ways to ensure the preservation of these important digital resources. In September 2005, library directors from 17 universities and colleges met to discuss the current state of electronic journal preservation and endorsed a statement calling for “Urgent Action” to preserve scholarly electronic journals. In the months that followed, many library associations also endorsed this statement and its principal message that “in a scholarly environment…
Research Report
July 26, 2007
University Publishing In A Digital Age
Scholars have a vast range of opportunities to distribute their work, from setting up web pages or blogs, to posting articles to working paper websites or institutional repositories, to including them in peer-reviewed journals or books. In American colleges and universities, access to the internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous; consequently nearly all intellectual effort results in some form of “publishing.” Yet universities do not treat this function as an important, mission-centric endeavor. The result has been a scholarly…
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Research Report
March 26, 2007
Scholarly Communications in the Biosciences Discipline
In a series of projects, we were asked by JSTOR to examine scholarly communication practices in various disciplines. The goals of this work were to understand how research is conducted and disseminated in select disciplines, and to identify the importance of different scholarly resources. In this project, we focused on the field of biosciences.
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Research Report
January 1, 2007
Getting from Here to There, Safely
Library Strategic Planning for the Transition Away from Print Journals
The transition of scholarly journals from print to electronic formats is affecting libraries and publishers in numerous ways. Based on several projects we had conducted on this transition, examining libraries and publishers alike, this article provided recommendations for library leaders about how best to manage the transition. Some key issues covered included responsive vs. strategic management of the process, special needs for journals from smaller publishers, infrastructure planning, and preservation considerations.
Research Report
August 31, 2006
Scholarly Communications in the History Discipline
In a series of projects, we were asked by JSTOR to examine scholarly communication practices in various disciplines. The goals of this work were to understand how research is conducted and disseminated in select disciplines, and to identify the importance of different scholarly resources. In this project, we focused on the field of history.
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