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Topic: Cross-institutional collaboration

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
October 22, 2019

Driving Liberal Arts Transfer Pathways

It’s Time for Independent Colleges to Target Community College Students 

Every fall, an estimated 1.1 million American students begin their postsecondary education at community colleges. While most (80 percent) intend to earn their bachelor’s degree, less than a third transfer to a four-year institution and only 13 percent actually earn their bachelor’s degree in six years. Transfer practices between two- and four-year institutions are not adequately serving students. What’s more, scalable policies designed…
Past Event
October 22, 2019

Network Ecosystems – Story-Telling & Sharing among Partners

Roger Schonfeld at SUNY's Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education Conference

On Tuesday, October 22, Roger Schonfeld will present on “Network Ecosystems – Story-Telling & Sharing among Partners” as part of a panel at SUNY’s Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education Conference in Albany, New York. He will be joined by Mark McBride (Library Senior Strategist, SUNY System), Norman Bier (Director of the Open Learning Initiative, Carnegie Mellon & Executive Director, Simon Initiative), Donna Desrochers (Associate, rpk Group), Kim Thanos (Chief Executive Officer, Lumen Learning), and David Yaskin (Chief Executive Officer, Faculty…
Blog Post
October 17, 2019

How to Develop a Successful Collaborative Network in and around Higher Education

New Playbook

At the same time that it is becoming more essential to individual mobility, economic vitality, and social cohesion, postsecondary education is becoming a more complex endeavor. In response, a growing set of leaders in higher education, workforce development, business, and government are turning to focused and deep collaborative efforts to drive change within their own organizations and across the ecosystems in which they operate. In a new Ithaka S+R publication, Unlocking the Power of Collaboration, Jenna Joo, Jeff Selingo,…
Playbook
October 17, 2019

Unlocking the Power of Collaboration

How to Develop a Successful Collaborative Network in and around Higher Education

Recognizing that solutions to today’s complex problems go beyond the boundaries of a single organization or institution, some postsecondary education leaders and training providers are turning to a more focused and deeper level of collaboration to drive both individual and broader systemic change with potential for far-reaching social impact.
Past Event
November 7, 2019

The Future of Subscription Bundles: Big Deal, No Deal, or What’s the Deal?

Roger Schonfeld at the Charleston Conference

On Thursday, November 7, from 4:30 – 5:15 pm, Roger Schonfeld will present on “The Future of Subscription Bundles: Big Deal, No Deal, or What’s the Deal?” as part of a Charleston Conference panel. Beth Bernhardt (Oxford University Press), Tim Bucknall (the University of North Carolina at Greensboro), and Mark McBride (SUNY System Administration) are also presenting. For more information and to register, please see the conference website. About the panel In light of well-publicized negotiations around journal deals…
Blog Post
August 6, 2019

Inside an Ithaka S+R Training Workshop

In 2016, Ithaka S+R began collaborating with libraries to extend our deep dives into the research needs of faculty in a variety of fields, including, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Public Health, and Indigenous Studies. Having partnered with 75 university libraries for these studies, last year, we began using a…
Blog Post
June 27, 2019

Measures that Matter: Review of State Public Libraries Survey Now Available

Last Tuesday, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) released Measures that Matter Action Plan Step 2.1: A Review of State Public Library Survey Data Elements. We were excited to conduct this phase of work on COSLA’s behalf and believe the findings from this important systematic review of current state public library surveys, as well as states’ data collection and reporting practices, will be helpful for a wide range of libraries.
Issue Brief
June 6, 2019

What’s a Collection Anyway?

In 1953, Kenneth J. Braugh stated that the mission of Harvard’s library was to collect and preserve everything. Those days are long gone. For the last couple of decades, given the rapid expansion of scholarly content sources and types, even the best-funded research libraries have become cognizant that a comprehensive collection is an unattainable vision. Nevertheless, many research library mission statements continue to give prominence to their role in making the world’s knowledge accessible to a wide range of user…
Blog Post
June 3, 2019

Three questions for Carrie Corneilus, Sara Morris, Rebecca Orozco, and Michael Peper

Participants Reflect on the Indigenous Studies Research Support Services Project

For our quarterly newsletter, we interviewed Carrie Corneilus, a librarian at Haskell Indian Nations University, and Sara Morris, Rebecca Orozco, and Michael Peper, librarians at the University of Kansas (KU), about their participation in the Research Support Services project on Indigenous Studies. The two universities collaborated in a unique partnership to  interview Indigenous Studies scholars. 1. Why did you want to participate in this study? Carrie Corneilus: I am a tribal librarian of students and faculty…
Past Event
June 17, 2019

Christine Wolff-Eisenberg at EBLIP10

In June, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will be presenting at two sessions during the the EBLIP10 Conference at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. For more information about the conference, please see the EBLIP website. Monday, 17 June 3:00-4:30pm: Christine and Janet Fletcher are speaking on “Collectively Supporting Faculty: A national study of research and teaching practices and needs.” Libraries are increasingly called upon to provide evidence that their decisions—about the services they offer, the spaces they create, and the…
Blog Post
April 16, 2019

When Research is Relational

New Report on Supporting the Research Practices of Indigenous Studies Scholars

I am excited to announce the publication of the capstone report from Ithaka S+R’s Indigenous Studies project, which brought together teams at eleven academic libraries to study the research support needs of Indigenous Studies scholars. Indigenous Studies places Indigenous perspectives at the center of inquiry, with unique protocols for defining, describing, sharing, and preserving information. The project provided a unique opportunity for academic librarians to come together, learn from Indigenous…
Blog Post
March 6, 2019

Scale Is Existential

New Issue Brief on Library Collaborations

For more than a hundred years, academic libraries in North America have understood that they must seek scale greater than that of their own institution in order to provide the collections and services that their communities need. In search of cross institutional scale, libraries have developed an array of consortia and other collaborative vehicles. But as the nature of the collections libraries seek to provide, and the services that their user communities require, has evolved, so must their…
Issue Brief
March 6, 2019

Restructuring Library Collaboration

Strategy, Membership, Governance

Academic libraries typically serve individual higher education institutions, yet their objectives require that they achieve greater negotiating power, more efficient distribution of collections, and stronger systems and services than even the largest academic library can provide itself. As a result, academic libraries have sought for more than a century to generate cross-institutional scale. In this paper, I examine efforts to generate that scale, including consortia and other membership organizations, which collectively I term “collaborative vehicles.” Yet collaboration is not good…
Research Report
December 17, 2018

A 2018 Report on the Progress of the American Talent Initiative in its First Two Years

This report offers the first look at the progress achieved during the American Talent Initiative’s first two years. Between the 2015-16 academic year (the year before ATI’s founding) and the 2017-18 academic year, ATI members increased their enrollment of low- and moderate-income students by 7,291, an increase that represents about 15 percent of the 50,000-by-2025 goal, achieved by about a third of eligible schools. During this period, more than two-thirds of ATI members increased Pell enrollment, and for about half…
Blog Post
June 21, 2018

The Limits of Area Studies: Studying Scholars of Asia

From 2015-2017, Ithaka S+R partnered with 29 researchers at 11 academic libraries in the U.S. to study the research activities and support needs of scholars in Asian Studies. Today we are excited to release the project’s capstone report, Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Asian Studies Scholars, which provides actionable findings for organizations, institutions, and professionals who support these research activities.  Our report is complemented by the local findings (see below) that have…
Research Report
June 21, 2018

Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Asian Studies Scholars

Executive Summary Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services Program investigates how the research support needs of scholars vary by discipline and includes reports on history, chemistry, art history, religious studies, agriculture, and public health. In 2017-2018, Ithaka S+R examined the changing research methods and practices of Asian studies scholars conducting research through U.S. institutions. This project was undertaken collaboratively with research teams at 11 academic libraries with the goal of identifying services to better support Asian studies scholars. This report…
Blog Post
April 18, 2018

American Talent Initiative Reaches 100 Schools Committed to Expanding Opportunity for More High-Achieving, Low-and Moderate-Income Students

We’re happy to share the news that the American Talent Initiative now includes 100 institutions committed to expanding opportunity for more high-achieving, low- and moderate-income students. The full press release about reaching this milestone is below.   In just over a year, ATI has grown from 30 to 100 institutions working to attract, enroll, and graduate high-achieving, low- and moderate-income college students The American Talent Initiative (ATI), a Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative led by the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence…
Blog Post
March 2, 2018

Invest in Talent to Move the Dial on Socioeconomic Diversity on Nation’s College Campuses

Invest in talented young adults, and they will help us solve the world’s problems. That was the charge of Dan Porterfield, president of Franklin & Marshall College and incoming president of the Aspen Institute, to college and university presidents who gathered February 22-23 in New York City for the American Talent Initiative annual presidential summit. The effort, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and co-led by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and Ithaka S+R, has an ambitious goal: attract, enroll and…
Blog Post
January 29, 2018

Facing Declining Enrollment, Liberal Arts Colleges Turn to New Modes of Instruction

Lessons from a Teagle Grant Program

Over each of the past five years, the total number of undergraduate students in the United States has declined. There are multiple potential reasons for this trend: rising tuition, questions about the value of a postsecondary education, and shifting demographics have all likely contributed. While the impact of this trend has been felt across higher education institutions, private liberal arts colleges have been hit particularly hard, as have liberal arts programs offered at public institutions, marked by a…