Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
August 16, 2018
Where Did All the E-Books Go?
A LAP Blog Post
The Library Acquisition Patterns: Preliminary Findings report published in July was the culmination of several years’ worth of work to build a data infrastructure, gather the data, and begin analysis of patterns in U.S. academic libraries’ acquisitions. Although just a stepping stone to publishing a final analysis later this year, we decided to release this preliminary report with a few goals in mind. First, we wanted to update our many dozens of participants…
Blog Post
August 15, 2018
Announcing a New Project on Language and Literature
This fall Ithaka S+R is launching the tenth project in our ongoing Research Support Services program. This project will focus on the research practices of faculty in the fields of language and literature, broadly defined, and will seek to identify areas where these scholars need further support. Research in language and literature is typically delineated through sub-fields grouped by genre, theory and/or method of analysis (e.g., poetry, history of…
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
July 19, 2018
Library Acquisition Patterns
A Preliminary Report with Data from OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services
As an organization that researches scholarly communications and libraries, our interest at Ithaka S+R was piqued when Joseph Esposito questioned whether university press sales to academic libraries were actually in decline. The reason? University presses tend to measure their sales to academic libraries through the wholesale vendors that traditionally distribute their publications. Since Amazon came onto the scene, however, academic libraries have begun to acquire many of their titles from the online retailer, whose sales metrics are not typically counted…
Research Report
July 19, 2018
Library Acquisition Patterns: Preliminary Findings
Several years ago, we set out to better understand how both library acquisition practices and the distribution patterns of publishers and vendors were evolving over time.[1] Within the academic publishing community, there is a sense that academic libraries are acquiring fewer and fewer books and that university presses are struggling amid declining sales. The latter may certainly be true—a recent UK study found that between 2005 and 2014, retail sales of academic books dropped by 13 percent…
Blog Post
July 5, 2018
Strengthening Library Education
New Report from IMLS
Last November, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) convened experts to explore how to strengthen the formal education component of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant program to best support library and information science programs to meet the needs of students and libraries while increasing diversity within the library and archives professions. I’m excited to share that this report which I coauthored, “Positioning Library and Information Science Graduate Programs for 21st Century…
Blog Post
June 27, 2018
New Questionnaire for the US Faculty Survey 2018 Now Available
I am thrilled to announce that we have completed our updates for the upcoming Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2018. As in previous cycles, the survey will explore the research and teaching practices, perceptions, and needs of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. This year, we have developed new thematic areas of coverage on research dissemination, open educational resources, and learning analytics, which we believe are vital emergent strategic issues for higher education institutions and their…
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…
Blog Post
June 21, 2018
Leveraging the Asian Studies Project Locally
Lafayette College’s Perspective
In the spring of 2017, Lafayette College joined eleven other institutions to participate in Ithaka S+R’s qualitative study of Asian Studies scholars (Ithaka S+R’s capstone report, which includes links to the reports authored by the participating institutions, can be found here). As part of the project, Michaela Kelly and I conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews with our faculty members on their research focus and methods, information access and discovery, dissemination practices, and the state…
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
June 1, 2018
Employing Cognitive Interviews for Questionnaire Testing
Preparing to Field the US Faculty Survey
Ithaka S+R is gearing up to field our seventh national US Faculty Survey on the research and teaching practices, perceptions, and needs of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. The questionnaire for this upcoming cycle has been designed to continue tracking critical trends in higher education from previous cycles while at the same time introducing new questions to address issues of current strategic importance. Having gathered…
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
April 24, 2018
Now Available: Dataset for Library Survey 2016 at ICPSR
Last year we published findings from the Library Survey 2016. We have been running this survey on a triennial basis since 2010 to examine the attitudes and behaviors of library deans and directors at not-for profit four-year academic institutions across the United States. The Library Survey report aims to provide academic librarians and higher education leaders with information about the important issues and trends that are shaping the purpose, role, and viability of…
Blog Post
April 3, 2018
Joining Together to Support Undergraduate Instruction
A New Program from Ithaka S+R
For over five years Ithaka S+R has successfully developed large-scale research projects through our Research Support Services program to study the research support needs of scholars in disciplines including history, art history, chemistry, religious studies, agriculture and public health. We are now launching…
Blog Post
April 2, 2018
Oya Y. Rieger to Join Ithaka S+R
I am thrilled to announce that digital preservation expert and scholarly communications leader Oya Y. Rieger will be joining Ithaka S+R as a Senior Advisor on our Libraries & Scholarly Communication team on July 1. Oya has worked at Cornell University for over 25 years and currently is the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources & Preservation Services. When Oya joins Ithaka S+R, she will continue her affiliation with Cornell, staying on as…
Blog Post
March 16, 2018
The Services Portfolio of an Academic Library: A Framework
Academic libraries have been rethinking their strategic directions and services portfolios. I have argued recently that academic libraries face certain essential transformations, as they move beyond print general collections towards a variety of other roles. In a current project, Ithaka S+R and OCLC Research have been developing a typology of higher education institutions to explore the different ways that libraries are evolving at a service level. An essential…
Blog Post
March 13, 2018
New Thematic Areas for the 2018 US Faculty Survey
Ithaka S+R is preparing to field our seventh national US Faculty Survey on the research and teaching practices, perceptions, and needs of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. Over the past month, we have had the opportunity to speak with four outstanding project advisors who have helped inform our focus for this upcoming survey cycle. The 2018 US Faculty Survey will be designed to continue tracking critical trends in higher education…
Blog Post
February 20, 2018
Nicole Betancourt Joins Ithaka S+R
New Assessment Associate Will Support Growing Surveys Work
We are thrilled to announce that Nicole Betancourt has joined Ithaka S+R as our assessment associate to support our surveys work. Nicole was most recently the assistant project director at Clarion Research, where her work focused on managing market research projects within the transportation, media and entertainment, and technology sectors. At Ithaka S+R, Nicole will be leading the day-to-day operations of our Local Surveys Program–an area where we have seen…
Blog Post
February 15, 2018
The Humanities Digital Divide
On Friday, February 9th I attended the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Office of the Digital Humanities at the National Endowment of the Humanities. It was a jam-packed, vivid testimony to the ODH’s vision and work, featuring a keynote by Kate Zwaard, Chief of National Digital Initiatives at the Library of Congress, and John Unsworth, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Virginia, shorter remarks from leaders in the digital humanities (…