Topic: Libraries

While academic libraries in the United States have actively collaborated with each other for more than 100 years, the digital turn has brought an explosion of interest in and pursuit of cross-institutional collaboration. These include large-scale digital access and preservation initiatives like HathiTrust, print preservation and access collaborations like Scholar’s Trust and WEST, metropolitan-level efforts ranging broadly from the Chicago Collections Alliance to MARLI, unmediated borrowing such as ConnectNY, and, of burgeoning strategic importance, the collaborations enabled through cloud-based library…

OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R have studied and written extensively about the evolution of higher education and the implications of this evolution for the organizational structure and services of libraries. Today, we are announcing a new project, “University Futures; Library Futures”, in which OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R are joining forces to carry out a collaborative project on the future of academic libraries, in the context of changes in the higher…

Last week, Ithaka S+R published results from the US Library Survey 2016. This report examines the perspectives of library deans and directors on strategy and priorities broadly. This cycle, we expanded our coverage of issues related to talent management, building on recent Ithaka S+R projects on organizational structure and inclusion, diversity, and equity. Employees are often the greatest asset of an organization, and therefore, a mindset to recruit, develop, and retain an outstanding pool of employees…

Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing the US Library Survey 2016, which tracks the perspectives and practices of academic libraries whose institutions offer a bachelor’s degree or higher. We achieved strong participation by library deans and directors, with a response rate of 49%. The project examines the key strategic directions these leaders and their libraries are pursuing as well as some of the constraints against which they act. Our findings fall into a number of key categories: Library directors anticipate…

Today, we are publishing a report that grew out of a new type of collaboration facilitated by Ithaka S+R. As we continue to study the research practices of faculty in particular disciplines, we have developed a model that harnesses the knowledge and expertise of librarians on the ground. For Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Religious Studies Scholars, sponsored by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) with additional support from the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society…

Today’s news that Elsevier has acquired Plum Analytics from EBSCO provides the latest opportunity for insight into the remarkable evolution of the largest and most sophisticated academic content providers. From Elsevier and Springer to EBSCO and ProQuest, these publishers and content providers are reducing their reliance on their content businesses as engines of growth. While these businesses remain strong, they are pursuing one of two newer directions for greater growth. Aggregators like EBSCO…

In 2015, Ithaka S+R partnered with New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs to conduct a survey to measure the demographics of the city’s cultural sector. The report of findings was published in January 2016, and is available on our website. Recently, the data used for this report has been made available in an anonymized form through a new national initiative toward archiving data in the arts. The survey of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs grantees…

How do various stakeholders in higher education believe that research habits can be best developed and supported?  And how important is the role of the library in developing these skills? Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to share findings on these perspectives from Ithaka S+R surveys of students, faculty members, and library directors. In this webinar hosted by NFAIS, I was joined by Lisa Hinchliffe, Professor/Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library at the…

Before being named CEO of LYRASIS, Robert Miller was the General Manager of Digital Libraries at the Internet Archive, where he oversaw the scanning of millions of books in both the United States and in a host of other countries. It is my opinion that librarianship was a contagious disease that infected him. He simply fell in love with the mission of libraries, so it was no surprise when I learned that Robert had been tapped to lead LYRASIS…

The Modern Language Association’s Working Group on the Future of the Print Record released its report last month and I urge the library community to consider it carefully and respond. As a member of the working group, I have been impressed with the collaboration of scholars and librarians in dealing with an issue that is both important and complex. Librarians have witnessed a dramatic change in students’ and researchers’ use of print materials housed in their collections. The convenience…

Since taking part in ITHAKA’s The Next Wave 2016 a few weeks ago, I have been reflecting on what I heard and what it means for the libraries and publishers we work with every day. As higher education changes to meet the needs of 21st century students, libraries and publishers must also adapt. Here are just a few of the big takeaways from my perspective. We need to align behind student success. The student is no longer the 18-22-year…

Last week, Times Higher Education shared provocative findings from a recent report that suggested that libraries have “little to offer” the next generation of academics.  According to the key findings of the report, funded by the Publishing Research Consortium, libraries appear to have “lost all visibility” with early career researchers, in part because many “have not visited the library for years.”  These conclusions were based on interviews with 116 junior academics in science and social science fields from seven…

Earlier this year we partnered with Jisc and Research Libraries UK (RLUK) for the second cycle of the UK Survey of Academics to understand the research and teaching attitudes and practices of academics in the UK higher education sector. Key findings from this snapshot of national findings included: A substantial increase in the of respondents that preserves their research data in a repository and a corresponding decrease in the share that preserves data themselves An increase in the share…

How should qualitative research be incorporated into a library’s research agenda? In the latest issue of Weave: Journal of Library Experience “provocateur anthropologists” Donna Lanclos and Andrew Asher reflect on the state of ethnographic research in libraries, which they characterize as more “ethnographish” than ethnographic. Some of the trappings of ethnographish library research include that the projects are: smaller scale, rely on “pre-packaged” methods, and aim towards solving institution-specific problems. In contrast, drawing on their experiences as…

Earlier this year we published findings from the US Faculty Survey 2015. We have been running this survey on a triennial basis since 2000 to examine the attitudes and behaviors of scholars at four-year colleges and universities across the United States. The survey provides the higher education community with a regularly updated snapshot of its faculty members at a moment in time, as well as trend analysis of changes. Key findings from this latest snapshot of national findings include:…

The Charleston Conference last week featured a plenary address from Jim Neal, Columbia University’s former library director and the ALA president-elect. Jim spoke about his views on the changing nature of libraries and offered a series of “commandments” about how libraries can and should evolve going forward. Among many other observations based on his years of experience in academic research libraries, Jim emphasized his views that strategic planning processes fail us too often, that we need fewer ideas and stronger…

At the 2016 Library Assessment Conference, we had the opportunity to attend sessions on how to demonstrate the value of libraries, methods for data collection, analysis, and visualization, designing library spaces, and organizational issues facing the community.  The conference, which attracted over 640 attendees, focused on building effective, sustainable, practical assessment. A number of themes that ran across the conference resonate with our ongoing work at Ithaka S+R. Data visualization There was an overwhelming amount of interest from both…

Open Access Week is a particularly appropriate time to reflect on the many different ways to expand access. Appropriately, new publishing and distribution models for the scholarly and scientific literature will be the subject of much discussion. Existing library collections of journals, books, newspapers, and government documents also contain substantial amounts of public domain material, and as Melissa Levine reminds us in her issue brief we are releasing today, “The public domain is the ultimate open access.”…