tag: Survey

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of the 2025 Art Museum Director Survey. Fielded originally in 2020 and again in 2022, with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the Kress Foundation, the survey gathers the perspectives of museum directors on topics including leadership and strategy, budget and staffing, visitors and the public, and collections. As the first survey was distributed shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic led museums across the country to close their doors, the findings served…

Since 2014, Ithaka S+R and the Mellon Foundation have fielded the Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey in collaboration with the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). We are excited to announce the continued collaboration through a fourth cycle of the demographic survey of art museum employees. For over a decade, the Staff Demographic Survey has stood as one of the most cited quantitative studies on demographics within North American art museums. By measuring…

Many college students face challenges that extend beyond the classroom, requiring holistic support that addresses both academic and non-academic needs. “College fluency,” which is the knowledge and a corresponding set of abilities that enable students and staff to effectively locate and use relevant college services, programs, and resources, can help students successfully engage with and self-advocate within the culture and bureaucracy of higher education institutions to achieve their goals. Through our College Fluency Capacity Building research initiative, undertaken with…

In July 2024, a new set of federal regulations significantly limiting transcript withholding for students who owe a balance to their institution went into effect. Predating this policy, 13 states created their own rules prohibiting or limiting this practice. These policies varied across states with some creating blanket bans on transcript withholding and others only banning the practice in limited circumstances, such as when a transcript was needed by employers or the military for education verification. Ithaka S+R partnered with…

A recent survey conducted at Bryant University reveals an interesting trend: while students and faculty are increasingly adopting AI chatbots, staff members seem to lag behind. This guest blog post delves into the possible reasons behind this disparity using the 77 faculty, 111 staff, and 224 student responses collected between November 2023 and February 2024.

Ithaka S+R is honored to be partnering with the Library of Congress on a research study to better understand the experiences of people who use the library's collections and resources to conduct research. This mixed methods project includes an online survey followed by interviews of selected researchers. The findings from this study will be used to help inform the Library of Congress’ strategy for supporting the researchers that utilize the library’s collections and resources.

We are thrilled to announce that Ithaka S+R in partnership with the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) Library has launched our new, national College Fluency Survey. This survey is a part of a comprehensive, two-and-a-half-year initiative funded by IMLS aimed at understanding how institutions can better support a critical aspect of student success: college fluency—or the knowledge and abilities that enable students to effectively access, utilize, and advocate for needed college services and resources. Through this project we…

AI has driven important advances in biomedical research for some time, spurring drug discovery, improving medical imaging, and facilitating engagements with large datasets in emerging fields like precision medicine. However, recent advances, notably the advent of consumer-friendly generative AI tools, have increased the likelihood that AI-informed research and scholarly communication will be ubiquitous in the near future. Managing this transformation in ways that ensure high-quality, reproducible results and ethical, inclusive research practices is important across academic disciplines, but identifying current…

If nothing else, the pandemic taught everyone the importance of the ability to manage change and pivot quickly. Now, three years after higher education institutions had to manage newly remote or hybrid operations, what will the next big change catalyst be, and how can we prepare for it? The what and how are at the heart of a new question we introduced in the latest cycle of the 2022 Ithaka S+R Library Survey. Nestled among questions about value proposition…

Last year, Ithaka S+R, in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and with funding from the Mellon Foundation, was able to launch the third cycle of the Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey. Filling out this survey can be time intensive, as rather than survey staff directly, we ask that museums submit data that has been recorded in their human resources system. This requires museum directors or their designee to fill…

On Tuesday, January 31, we published the A*CENSUS II Archives Administrators Survey findings. The Archives Administrator Survey Report is the second report in the A*CENSUS II series, the first being the All Archivists Survey Report published in August 2022. The Archives Administrators Survey gathered data from the most senior archives leaders and decision makers regardless of the size of the archives, including administrators who oversee large archives organizations, archives units within broader institutions, and small community archives collections.

Earlier this week, we published the findings from the A*CENSUS II: All Archivists Survey, the first national survey in 17 years designed to gather information about the demographics, education levels, job placement, salaries, and student loan debt of archivists and community memory workers. The survey also explored the extent to which this community views the archival profession as inclusive, equitable, and diverse. Nearly 6,000 archivists took the time to share their experiences through the survey.

Today, Jennifer Frederick and I published findings from the inaugural art museum director survey, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and conducted in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Alliance of Museums. The survey captures the perspectives of directors from a moment in time before the COVID-19 pandemic forced closures of museums in the US, and before the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked major protests against police brutality…