tag: COVID-19
Blog Post
September 9, 2021
How Can the Library Best Support Student and Institutional Success?
Perspectives from a National Survey of Community College Library Directors
For the past three years, Ithaka S+R has explored how student-facing service departments—including academic libraries—are organized, funded, and staffed at community and technical colleges across the country. As part of this ongoing IMLS-funded Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem (CCASSE) research initiative, we surveyed community college library directors this past February. Today, I’m pleased to announce the publication of our findings from that national study. In Library Strategy and Collaboration Across the College Ecosystem…
Research Report
September 9, 2021
Library Strategy and Collaboration Across the College Ecosystem
Results from a National Survey of Community College Library Directors
How can the library be best positioned to continue enabling student and institutional success? The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem research initiative seeks to examine how student-facing service departments—including academic libraries—are organized, funded, and staffed at community and technical colleges across the country. In February 2021, we surveyed 321 community college library directors to provide the community with a snapshot of current service provision, leadership perspectives on the impact of COVID-19, and challenges faced in making decisions and…
Blog Post
August 26, 2021
Staying Connected Through the Power of Technology
Centering Student Experiences
At the onset of the pandemic, higher education institutions across the country rushed to bolster digital infrastructure, to maintain both instructional continuity as well as academic and financial advising, so that students could stay enrolled and graduate. Many institutions also rapidly developed new services to accommodate student technology needs through device loaning programs and Wi-Fi partnerships, typically led by the library as gleaned through a series of roundtables conducted with library directors earlier this spring. While the initial investments…
Blog Post
August 16, 2021
Building Community During the Pandemic and Beyond
Centering Student Experiences
The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem initiative began in 2019 as part of the Ithaka S+R research portfolio focused on understanding, measuring, and increasing student success at community colleges through a variety of departments and service providers. We have had the great fortune to work with a group of outstanding student advisors from across the country who contribute unique and vital perspectives as we shape recommendations…
Blog Post
August 2, 2021
Leading Community College Libraries During the Pandemic
Library Directors Share Their Experiences
Community colleges and their students have faced enormous challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two-year colleges serve especially diverse student populations, including a high percentage of students of color, first-generation students, working students, and student parents, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the social, economic, and public health effects of the pandemic. Community colleges have made considerable efforts to meet student needs, despite having fewer resources than most four-year colleges and universities…
Blog Post
July 26, 2021
SAA 2021 Annual Meeting
What to Watch For
Next month, archivists from across the country will convene virtually to discuss emerging and ongoing issues in the field at the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Annual Meeting, ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2021: Together/Apart. This year’s meeting will take place from August 4 to 6 (with some pre-conference activities earlier in the week) and will showcase 10 live sessions and 20 pre-recorded sessions with live Q&As. The conference will feature keynote speakers, general sessions, networking opportunities,…
Blog Post
June 28, 2021
Evaluating Success in the Midst of a Protracted Pandemic
Four Guiding Principles
There was a “before” and there will be an “after,” but how do we evaluate success while at our current locus—somewhere in the nebulous middle of a prolonged pandemic? More than a year into the pandemic, many evaluations are being conducted using measures of success that were established in a radically different context. The environment has shifted, and the goals and definitions of success for items under evaluation—everything…
Blog Post
April 28, 2021
What Will it Take to Move the Needle on Student Basic Needs?
Last year, we released a landscape review delving into how different metrics of student success are currently prioritized, defined, quantified, and used within the community college sector—examining how traditional metrics of success, like those aligning with typical college objectives like graduation, retention, enrollment, and course completion, are more often prioritized and required for funding, accountability, and accreditation purposes. Subsequent interviews with institutional research and effectiveness officers provided even…
Research Report
April 28, 2021
Moving the Needle on College Student Basic Needs
National Community College Provost Perspectives
For many years, higher education data collection and funding efforts have focused on student success metrics like enrollment, graduation, retention, and course completion rates. At the same time, higher education leaders have become increasingly aware—in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic—of the vast array of challenges that college students face outside of the classroom that prevent them from fully succeeding. To shed light on the challenges and opportunities associated with the collection and prioritization of a broader set of student…
Issue Brief
March 31, 2021
The Disproportionate Impact of the Pandemic on Women and Caregivers in Academia
Evidence is mounting that women in academia have disproportionately been affected by the pandemic. Recent research points to new gender gaps in productivity and publishing, with fewer women publishing articles and manuscripts. And in addition to these professional challenges, women in academia are also facing unique personal challenges during the pandemic, including balancing childcare and home responsibilities while working towards achieving tenure in an academic pipeline where it is already challenging for women to succeed.
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…
Blog Post
March 3, 2021
How Can Community College Services Be Organized to Best Meet Student Needs?
Over the course of their attendance, community college students must navigate through an array of services—delivered through student affairs departments, academic affairs departments, libraries, and their instructors—to find the support they need. Whether they find that support depends in part on whether their institutions have developed effective service models and organizational strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the attendant necessity for increased remoting learning amidst enrollment declines and budgetary strains, also creates new challenges for students as well as…
Past Event
April 12, 2021
Roger Schonfeld at UKSG Annual Conference
On April 12, Roger Schonfeld will discuss the impact of COVID on the research enterprise, including the impacts on how research is conducted, the implications this could have on researchers, the ability to attract the funding, and how the landscape of research disciplines could change. For more information, please see this link. …
Past Event
February 18, 2021
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg at Achieving the Dream Convening
On February 18th, 2021, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will discuss with fellow panelists what we knew about student needs going into the pandemic, what we learned from novel data collection during the pandemic, and how institutions are using these data to shape practices going forward. Panelists will share key research findings, especially those related to sustained and deepened equity gaps during the pandemic, and new strategies for gathering student perspectives. For more information on this session, please visit this link. …
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…
Blog Post
January 14, 2021
Maximizing and Assessing Engagement with Virtual Library Space
While states across the US have begun vaccine distribution and plan for further tiered rollout over the course of the year, COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations continue to be at all-time highs across most of the country. Campuses continue to push back the start date of the spring term, and the CDC has just released new data tying county-level, off-campus infections to on-campus residency. It is all but certain that higher education institutions will continue looking to…
Blog Post
January 4, 2021
Not Much Has (Yet) Changed
Open Access Priorities and the Impact of COVID-19
As it became clear at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that research on the virus was greatly needed by both scholars and the general public, many publishers quickly opened up access to previously paywalled content. Open access sharing of COVID-19 data became relatively more common with organizations such as the National Institutes of Health compiling and sharing databases of articles, enabling researchers…
Blog Post
December 16, 2020
Creating Virtual Library Spaces
Emerging Technologies
Many college students across the country, in light of the impacts of the pandemic on teaching, learning, and the broader student experience, feel disconnected from their peers and institutions, and crave the right kinds of space—quiet space, in particular—for effectively completing their coursework. Fostering a sense of belonging and providing spaces for both collaborative and independent student work have long…
Blog Post
December 9, 2020
The Impact of COVID-19 on Academic Libraries
New Report
Since 2010, Ithaka S+R has fielded a triennial survey to examine the priorities and strategies of library directors. Historically, the three-year time frame has been appropriate for tracking trends. But after releasing the most recent iteration in April 2020, we recognized that both the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing movements for racial justice were having an immediate impact on academic libraries. To examine the extent of library leaders’ prioritization of equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism…