Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
December 10, 2018
Learning at LAC
Notes from the Library Assessment Conference 2018
This year, the Association of Research Libraries and the University of Washington Libraries hosted their biennial Library Assessment Conference (LAC) in Houston, Texas. Having recently joined the Ithaka S+R survey team in November, this was my first time attending LAC, and I was eager to immerse myself in the sessions described in the schedule. I knew I was in the right place when the conference started with “Wednesday Metrics with Steve.”…
Blog Post
December 7, 2018
The Place of Manuscript Management Systems in a Consolidating Marketplace
It was my great privilege last month to facilitate a virtual workshop on the topic of The Place of Manuscript Management Systems in a Consolidating Marketplace. These services are at the heart of the publisher workflow, and they are the basis of fascinating consolidation today. Elsevier’s acquisition of Aries has brought its competition with Clarivate, which owns ScholarOne. Can these providers integrate manuscript management into their broader publishing…
Blog Post
November 28, 2018
Collectively Supporting Faculty in New Zealand
In 2018, the majority (six out of eight) of New Zealand academic libraries undertook the Ithaka S+R faculty survey in order to explore and deepen understanding of scholars’ research and teaching practices and needs. The project was initiated by the Council of New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL) with the Ithaka S+R instrument chosen as this is a well-established tool with a strong track record in evaluating the relationship between scholarly researchers and the use of libraries. The goal…
Blog Post
November 28, 2018
New Issue Brief on Scholars as Collectors
Today we publish an Ithaka S+R issue brief that is aimed at reframing how academic research support is conceptualized to better address scholars’ needs. Research support services in university settings are currently focused on aiding scholars as they work on specific research tasks or content, which is largely diffuse and often insufficiently funded. We contend that research support services would be more effective if designed to holistically reflect how scholars work. Looking to scholarly practices in a…
Issue Brief
November 28, 2018
Scholars ARE Collectors: A Proposal for Re-thinking Research Support
After fifteen years of digging into the research practices of scholars at Ithaka S+R, it is clear that scholars are collectors. We have found that they are creating and amassing increasingly complex personal collections of information over the course of their careers. These collections vary widely depending on the discipline and take many forms.
Blog Post
November 26, 2018
Library Assessment Conference 2018: What to Watch For
Every two years the Library Assessment Conference (LAC) brings together practitioners and researchers to discuss effective, sustainable, and practical approaches to library assessment. The conference and its program offerings provide an opportunity to take stock of how the library assessment field is evolving. As we eagerly wait for the 2018 conference in December, we share today what we are most closely tracking. The assessment movement continues to grow…
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…
Blog Post
October 29, 2018
Perspectives on the Changing Ecology of Digital Preservation
New Issue Brief
A significant portion of our educational, cultural, and communication activities take place online, as the web has become the primary hub for information, inspiration, entertainment, and social interactions. But digital information is both pervasive and ephemeral at the same time–by some estimates the average lifespan of a website is between 44 and 100 days–and in dire need of preservation. The challenge is not only preserving the bits of digital objects but also being able to transition over time…
Issue Brief
October 29, 2018
The State of Digital Preservation in 2018
A Snapshot of Challenges and Gaps
Our cultural, historic, and scientific heritage is increasingly being produced and shared in digital forms. The ubiquity, pervasiveness, variability, and fluidity of such content raise a range of questions about the role of research libraries and archives in digital preservation in the face of rapid organizational and technological changes and evolving organizational priorities. Ithaka S+R is interested in exploring the current landscape of digital preservation programs and services in order to identify research and policy questions that will contribute to…
Blog Post
October 23, 2018
Reflections on the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color
From September 26-30 the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) held their third national conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conference is sponsored by five associations of ethnic librarians and is a crucial venue for supporting librarians of color, and by extension, fostering diversity in the profession. A group of librarians on the Indigenous Studies project, in which 12…
Blog Post
October 18, 2018
Universities Are Changing and So Are Their Libraries
New Report from OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R
OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R, both known for exploring the implications for libraries of changes taking place in higher education, joined forces to work on a research project, generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, that examines variations in institutional missions and how those missions affect the services offered to library users. The resulting report, University Futures, Library Futures: Aligning Library Strategies with Institutional Directions, has just been published. Our hope is that both academic administrators and librarians…
Blog Post
September 17, 2018
From 101 Innovations to a Roadmap for Collaboration
Open Source Tools for Scholarly Workflow Support
Last month, I participated virtually in the Joint Roadmap for Open Science Tools (JROST) workshop as 86 individuals from 58 different organizations gathered in Berkeley on August 27-28 to explore the growing category of open source scholarly workflow tools, to compare notes, and to identify areas of cooperation and integration.The event program includes all the background information and presentations so I’ll try to highlight…
Blog Post
September 4, 2018
“The Degree Is Cool, But I’m More About the Knowledge”
How Community College Students Define Student Success
“Student success” has moved to the forefront of the higher education agenda. Success at community colleges — and four-year colleges — has often been defined by the achievement of institutional outcomes, predominantly comprised of various measures of student persistence, achievement, and attainment, including rates of transfer, enrollment in postsecondary education, GPA, retention, time to graduation, graduation, and post-graduation job attainment and compensation. However, these traditional measures of student success have often been derived from higher education institutions, state…
Blog Post
August 30, 2018
Dispatch from IFLA 2018
I recently presented at the 2018 IFLA World Library and Information congress on the Indigenous Studies project. For the project, Ithaka S+R is working with 12 university libraries to understand the research support needs of Indigenous Studies scholars. The project is endorsed by IFLA’s Indigenous Matters section and I presented alongside section member Camille Callison, who is serving…
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…
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…