Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
January 23, 2017
Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives on Understanding and Supporting Research Habits
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…
Blog Post
January 19, 2017
LYRASIS and its Inclusive Leadership Model
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…
Blog Post
January 4, 2017
The Future of the Print Record
Recommendations from the MLA’s Working Group
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…
Blog Post
December 13, 2016
Lessons for Scholarly Communication from The Next Wave 2016
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…
Blog Post
December 12, 2016
Libraries Becoming Invisible to Junior Scholars?
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…
Blog Post
December 5, 2016
Now Available: Dataset for UK Survey of Academics 2015 at ICPSR
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…
Blog Post
November 16, 2016
Breaking the Luxury Barrier
On Fostering Exploratory Qualitative Research in Libraries
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…
Blog Post
November 14, 2016
Now Available: Dataset for US Faculty Survey 2015 at ICPSR
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:…
Blog Post
November 7, 2016
Shaping a Library by Linking Planning and Budgeting
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…
Blog Post
November 3, 2016
Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment
Notes from the Library Assessment Conference
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…
Blog Post
October 26, 2016
Opening Access
The Copyright Review Management System and HathiTrust
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.”…
Issue Brief
October 26, 2016
Finding the Public Domain: The Copyright Review Management System
The public domain is the ultimate open access. It is key to the bargain of copyright. Rather simplistically, in order to incentivize authors to produce works, the public, through Congress, grants authors copyrights in those works. While there is a range of opinion about the purpose and nature of copyright, they all have one common idea: copyright is limited by time. A copyright is a monopoly that lasts for a limited time and is limited by certain conditions. Those limitations…
Blog Post
October 25, 2016
Leading a Library Differently
Last week, I spoke about leading academic libraries through organizational change. I am grateful to Joni Blake and the Greater Western Libraries Association for inviting me to speak with a group of about 40 research library directors. I drew from my recent project on organizational structure in research libraries, emphasizing that the library’s shift away from general collections and towards distinctive collections and richer campus engagement is widely…
Blog Post
October 18, 2016
Collaborating to Support Undergraduate Student Needs
The Local Survey at UC Santa Cruz
To better understand and support undergraduate student needs, the University Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz contacted Ithaka S+R to run the Undergraduate Student Survey on its campus. Under the leadership of Greg Careaga, Head of Assessment and Planning at the University Library, UCSC ran the survey in spring 2015, and also assisted Ithaka S+R in testing and piloting a new set of questions specifically designed to help academic libraries understand undergraduate perceptions and usage of library…
Blog Post
October 4, 2016
Examining Research and Teaching Practices of Canadian Faculty Members
Since 2014, eleven of the twenty-nine Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) member institutions have participated in running the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey on their campuses, providing a rich dataset of over 4,000 responses across the universities. This morning, we published findings on the research and teaching practices of these faculty members. We have been examining the attitudes and behaviors of academics in the US and the UK every three years since 2000 and 2012 respectively,…
Research Report
October 4, 2016
Canadian Association of Research Libraries Faculty Survey
Executive Summary of Findings
Since 2014, eleven member institutions from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) have administered the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey on their campuses.[1] The survey instrument covers many scholarly research and teaching-related topics, in part overlapping with the 2015 Ithaka S+R U.S. Faculty Survey and other previous iterations of the Ithaka S+R U.S. Faculty Survey.[2] Each of these Local Faculty Surveys included a core set of questions on preferences and practices related to discovery, digital…
Blog Post
September 27, 2016
Designing Libraries to Support Community College Students
Among the growing number of ethnographic studies of college students, only a tiny number look at students on community college campuses, and even fewer look specifically at how these students do their academic work and use the library. But community college students constitute an enormous and important group. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 7.2 million of the 20.5 million undergraduates in the US are enrolled in community colleges. And it is important to understand their…
Research Report
September 27, 2016
Reflections on Ethnographic Studies in a Community College Library System
Montgomery College, the community college of Montgomery County, Maryland, has made an enormous contribution to the study of libraries in community colleges with a series of reports about ethnographic studies on all three of its campuses.[1] Tanner Wray, Director of College Libraries and Information Services, led the studies, which gathered information from students and faculty members on how students do their academic work and how library resources, spaces, and services support this work. The Montgomery College project was…
Blog Post
September 23, 2016
Talking About Library Organization
Webinar Recording Now Available
Earlier this week, I was invited by John Burger and Joni Blake to present recent research findings to a webinar hosted by ASERL and GWLA. I focused on the recent Ithaka S+R study on Organizing the Work of the Academic Library. My presentation and the resulting q&a are recorded and available for download. More than 100 librarians joined…
Blog Post
September 20, 2016
Making Space in the Library for New Pedagogies
Academic librarians, seeing changes in teaching and learning at their institutions, seek to understand these changes and ensure that their spaces, services, and resources respond accordingly. They ask what is different about the work habits and library needs of students in “flipped” and other kinds of active learning classes. By gathering information on new teaching and learning patterns and practices, they will be better equipped to highlight relevant services, develop new ones that address emerging needs, and provide spaces within…