tag: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Blog Post
October 20, 2021
The A*CENSUS II: All Archivists Survey is Live
The A*CENSUS II: All Archivists Survey launched this week! This is the first broadscale survey of individual archivists and memory workers in the United States in 17 years. Nearly six thousand archivists participated in the original A*CENSUS in 2004, and the overwhelming response allowed the findings to be leveraged across the field in a myriad of ways. For institutions and professional organizations, the data informed the design of new curricula and the assessment of educational offerings; for archival institutions, the…
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
February 12, 2020
Now Available: Research Toolkit for Developing Services and Assessing Student Needs
Over the past three years, we partnered with a group of seven colleges looking to more effectively support their students by providing new and strengthened services from the library and beyond. Across these colleges, we interviewed dozens of students and later surveyed over 10,000 to examine their goals, challenges, and unmet needs. The project was led by Northern Virginia Community College and Ithaka S+R, with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)…
Blog Post
November 6, 2019
A Methodology for Testing Service Concepts
New Issue Brief
As academic libraries continue to evolve beyond a focus on collections, their leaders have long recognized the importance of developing new services that add value for learners, instructors, researchers, and other stakeholders. Sometimes, the demand for new services is self-evident, but in other cases the library must develop services speculatively and in a competitive environment. In these cases, planning and assessment tools can be of tremendous value in allowing library leaders to focus their new service initiatives most…
Issue Brief
November 6, 2019
What Do Our Users Need?
An Evidence-Based Approach for Designing New Services
In the face of evolving user needs, many academic libraries are reimagining the services they offer. As instruction moves online, how can libraries best provide support for teaching and learning? As research becomes more reliant on data, computation, and collaboration, where can libraries best add value? As colleges welcome more diverse student populations and greater contingent faculty labor to campus, what is the library’s role? As budgets shrink, how should a library prioritize which resources and services to provide?…
Blog Post
October 24, 2019
How to Survey Community College Students
New Report Now Available
Last month, we published a report based on the findings of a survey of over 10,000 students at seven community colleges. While the project itself is aimed at better understanding the needs, goals, and challenges of students, and assessing demand for a number of services that might support their success, a helpful byproduct of this research is what we have uncovered in administering a survey to this population. Today we are publishing…
Research Report
October 24, 2019
Surveying Community College Students
Strategies for Maximizing Engagement and Increasing Participation
Higher education researchers need to employ effective outreach methods in order to connect with the populations they study. For surveys in particular, low response rates can lead to non-response error, decreasing generalizability and representativeness. To combat these issues, Ithaka S+R has developed and tested a suite of outreach strategies that we have employed over the past two decades in our long-running national faculty survey as well as our local surveys of faculty and students.[1] In fall 2018, we surveyed students…
Blog Post
September 30, 2019
Students Are the Experts
New Report Explores the Needs of Community College Students
How do community college students define their own success? And what services do they think will help them succeed? To find out, we started with a radical idea: students are the experts. Last year, we interviewed dozens of students at seven community colleges on their goals and unmet needs. Today, we release a new report, Student Needs Are Academic Needs, on a…
Research Report
September 30, 2019
Student Needs Are Academic Needs
Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success
The Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project examines student success from the perspective of students themselves, what challenges they face in achieving it, and what services can be developed to effectively support them in their attainment of that success. In fall 2018, we surveyed 10,844 students across seven community colleges to assess the value of and demand for proposed services designed to address students’ expressed goals, challenges, and needs.
Blog Post
November 13, 2018
Community College Student Success Project in the Journal of Academic Librarianship
Preprint Available
Last week, the Journal of Academic Librarianship published an article that I co-authored with Braddlee from Northern Virginia Community College on the Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project. The CCLASSS project is focused on understanding (1) how “student success” can be defined so that it is inclusive both of students’ own needs as well as important policy priorities, and (2) what services colleges and their academic libraries…
Past Event
October 9, 2018
Supporting Student Success at Community Colleges
An Educause Webinar with Christine Wolff-Eisenberg and Dr. Braddlee
On Tuesday, October 9, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg and NOVA’s Dr. Braddlee are presenting at an EDUCAUSE ELI webinar. The webinar will run from 1:00 – 2:00 pm (ET). To register, please visit the EDUCAUSE website. About the webinar: What goals are community college students trying to achieve through their education? What challenges are they facing? What library and other academic support services might help them succeed? These questions are at the center of a multiyear research project that Ithaka S+R…
Blog Post
August 30, 2018
Community College Academic and Student Services Ecosystem
Ithaka S+R Launches New Research Project
Thirty-nine percent of all US undergraduate students attend community colleges, with roughly nine million enrolled in public two-year colleges annually. These institutions serve a wide range of students, including underrepresented minorities, veterans, low-income, adult, and first-generation students, as well as underprepared and non-traditional learners. But with only 37.5 percent earning a degree from either a two- or four-year institution within six years of starting…
Research Report
August 13, 2018
Amplifying Student Voices
The Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success Project
The Community College Libraries & Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project examines student goals, challenges, and needs from the student perspective. Through this project, we aim to provide community colleges and their libraries with strategic intelligence on how to adapt their services to most effectively meet student needs. In spring 2018, we conducted semi-structured interviews with students at seven partner community colleges on student objectives and goals, definitions of success, challenges faced, and coursework practices. Key findings Across…
Blog Post
August 12, 2018
New Report: Supporting Student Success at Community Colleges
What goals are community college students trying to achieve through their education? What challenges are they facing? What services might help them succeed? These questions are at the center of a multi-year research project that Ithaka S+R and Northern Virginia Community College, along with six other community college partners and with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), are currently undertaking. Today, we’re issuing our first report from the project,…
Blog Post
May 2, 2018
Amplifying the Student Voice
The Community College Libraries & Academic Support for Student Success Project
Borough of Manhattan Community College I have had the opportunity this spring to speak with students about their educational objectives, their academic and information usage practices, and the barriers they face as a part of the first phase of the Community College Libraries & Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project. Through this project, we and seven other partner colleges, aim to explore (1) how student success can be defined in a way that is inclusive of…
Blog Post
September 7, 2017
Community College Library Support for Student Success
Ithaka S+R and Northern Virginia Community College Launch New Research Project
Ithaka S+R regularly and extensively studies the perspectives, practices, and needs of faculty and students at four year colleges and universities to inform future roles for the academic library. Today, we are excited to announce that we will be expanding this work over the next 18 months to partner with seven community colleges in assessing and improving library support of student success within a community college context. We are grateful to the Institute of Museum and Library Services…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Searching for Sustainability
Strategies from Eight Digitized Special Collections
This report aims to address one of the biggest challenges facing libraries and cultural heritage organizations: how to move their special collections into the 21st century through digitization while developing successful strategies to make sure those collections remain accessible and relevant over time. Through a cooperative agreement as part of the National Leadership Grants Program, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in partnership with Ithaka S+R, to undertake in-depth case studies…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
American Antiquarian Society
Worcester, Massachusetts
Building a comprehensive digital collection and creating a vital revenue stream through commercial partnerships The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), an independent research library and scholarly society, has a clearly defined mission: to collect everything published and printed in America prior to 1877. The AAS has traditionally operated from a small endowment and contributions. But in 2002, Readex, a publisher of digitized historical primary source materials, began to reissue AAS-based microform products in digital form, paying the Society royalties that quickly…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Sustainable growth through collaborative partnerships The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), created in 2006, is the result of a collaboration of ten natural history museum and botanical garden libraries seeking to digitize core taxonomic literature and to make it free and openly available throughout the world. Today, the BHL includes fifteen member institutions whose efforts have shaped a collection of over 60,000 titles. It has developed beyond project status to become a service that researchers in systematic biology have integrated into…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History
Cornell University
Upfront investment in user-friendly back-end systems allows for continual growth The Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History (HEARTH) is a digitized collection of academic and popular monographs and journals comprising the core literature of home economics, or, as it is more commonly known today, human ecology. Created at Cornell University’s Mann Library, which serves primarily Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Human Ecology, HEARTH was launched in 2003 with the support of a two-year…