Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
June 21, 2016
Humanists and the Transition from Print to Electronic
In the Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015, which provides a periodic snapshot of faculty members’ practices and perceptions related to scholarly communications and information usage, we found that humanist respondents differed from those in other disciplines in the value they assign to and ways that they use print and electronic resources. Relative to respondents in other disciplines, humanists most highly value print versions of monographs, are less comfortable with transitioning from electronic formats of monographs and journals, and…
Blog Post
June 20, 2016
The Impact of Open Access Mandates
Looking at Trends in the UK Survey of Academics
What makes the 2015 Ithaka S+R Jisc RLUK survey of UK academics so interesting is its timing. The last survey was 2012, the year of the Finch report on open access. The latest survey took place in 2015, the year the Higher Education Funding Council of England (Hefce) published its policy linking open access to the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). To some extent the results tell us what we already know: three years is a long…
Blog Post
June 16, 2016
Looking at the Barriers to Access and Discovery in the Corporate Sector
Over the past year, I have developed a bit of a reputation in the publisher and publishing technology communities as the user experience “rabble-rouser.” By focusing on my own personal experience as a researcher, I have been able to call attention to the poor quality of information discovery and access workflows. Because publishers and libraries alike have invested substantially in user experience for their own platforms and websites, today it is the pathways between and across services and sites—the workflows—where…
Research Report
June 16, 2016
Barriers to Discovery of and Access to the Scientific Literature in the Corporate Sector
The offices that provide scientific information resources in major research companies – sometimes still called libraries – seek to make these resources available as seamlessly as possible. Barriers exist both for discovery and access. Corporate information professionals also face barriers in administering these information resources. In this project, Ithaka S+R examined the degree to which these various barriers are seen to exist in pharmaceutical, chemical, and food companies. The project had as its objective to inform the design of solutions…
Blog Post
June 15, 2016
Exploring the Research Practices of Academics in the UK
UK Survey of Academics 2015 Published
Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing the UK Survey of Academics, with our partners Jisc and RLUK. Fielded in autumn 2015, this is the second cycle of this project and therefore the first opportunity to examine trends over time. It uses a large-scale sample of academics from across the UK higher education sector. In addition, nearly a dozen individual institutions partnered with us to provide targeted help to ensure that our survey reached their academics. Given that the…
Research Report
June 15, 2016
UK Survey of Academics 2015
Ithaka S+R | Jisc | RLUK
Research is changing. New technology brings increased computational power and virtual representation of physical objects, allowing us to pose and answer previously unimaginable research questions. Big data can be mixed, linked and mined to reveal new unsuspected connections. Enhanced connectivity allows us to collaborate beyond traditional geographic and disciplinary boundaries. Funders demand greater demonstration of impact and engagement with non-academic communities and audiences. As research changes, so do researchers. Their behaviour and expectations shift, evolving to take advantage of new…
Blog Post
June 14, 2016
On Archives Users Present and Future
Notes from the ACA Conference
It was perhaps unsurprising that the 2016 annual Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) conference was themed “‘Futur Proche’: Archives and Innovation.” “Futur proche,” refers to the future tense in French and is also arguably the primary orientation of most discussions about archives and their users. Archivists’ pre-occupation with the future reflects the underlying preservation mission of archives. Barbara Craig cogently defines the mission of archives is to “acquire, preserve and make available records of enduring value” (135) and that…
Blog Post
May 25, 2016
Farmers and Musicians
A few years ago, I had an interesting conversation with a farmer about a study I was then conducting on academic research practices. “That’s interesting about academics,” she said, “but what about how farmers do research?” This was a very special farmer, an authority on community-supported agriculture and a noted speaker and author: Elizabeth Henderson (check out her book: Sharing the Harvest). We talked some more and, with great enthusiasm, Liz told me about the sources of information she…
Blog Post
May 16, 2016
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within Academic Libraries
Announcing a New Research Project
Diversity, equity, and inclusiveness are vital issues for society in the United States and beyond. National policy discussions have catalyzed concerns that our higher education institutions are not providing the leadership on these issues that we would like to see. Ithaka S+R is today announcing our latest project examining diversity in cultural organizations, this time focusing on academic libraries. The Spring 2016 ARL meeting provided ample evidence of the importance…
Blog Post
May 3, 2016
Younger Faculty Members Embracing Transition to Electronic Format
In the Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015, which provides a periodic snapshot of faculty members’ practices and perceptions related to scholarly communications and information usage, we found that there did not appear to be a trend towards a format transition for monographs. If anything, faculty members’ preference for using scholarly monographs in various ways in print format rather than digital format had increased since the previous cycle of the survey in 2012. When Roger Schonfeld and I had…
Blog Post
April 26, 2016
Notes from the CRL Collections Forum
@Risk: Stewardship, Due Diligence, and the Future of Print
The Center for Research Libraries’ spring forum, @Risk: Stewardship, Due Diligence, and the Future of Print, sought to remind librarians of the stewardship responsibilities we bear for preserving library collections and transferring them safely to the next generation. Bernie Reilly, CRL’s executive director, assembled a group of speakers on the first day to offer perspectives on a range of preservation-related topics, and the second day was devoted to panel discussions on trusted repositories, vendors’ roles and responsibilities, academic and independent…
Issue Brief
April 26, 2016
Due Diligence and Stewardship in a Time of Change and Uncertainty
This Issue Brief has been adapted from Deanna Marcum’s keynote address at the CRL Collections Forum held in Chicago on April 14, 2016.[1] For as long as humankind has been recording thoughts and ideas, we have been concerned about the technologies and processes that will ensure preservation of those records. Consider Cassiodorus, a high official in the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy in the Sixth Century, AD, who wrote about the invention of papyrus with all of the enthusiasm…
Blog Post
April 13, 2016
Teaching the US Faculty Survey
The new faculty survey report has arrived! As an LIS faculty member teaching in the areas of Academic Libraries and Sources and Services in the Humanities and Social Sciences, I couldn’t be more excited. Over the past several iterations, I have found the survey reports invaluable in my work as both an educator of future practitioners and a researcher exploring the role of libraries in the 21st Century Academy. The common thread through much of my teaching and research…
Blog Post
April 7, 2016
Tools for Designing Learning Spaces
The UK Higher Education Learning Space Toolkit, produced through the collaboration of SCHOMS, AUDE and UCISA,[1] provides a robust set of tools for designing learning spaces for the 21st century and a conceptual framework for approaching design differently as well as designing different kinds of spaces. The toolkit is organized around a seven-step design process, the first step of which is mainly conceptual and the remainder technical and procedural. It is written primarily for members of professional…
Blog Post
April 4, 2016
Tracking Trends in Faculty Research, Publishing, and Teaching
The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey Findings Released
This morning we published 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. What does this latest snapshot show us? Some key findings include: Reversing a…
Research Report
April 4, 2016
Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015
Ithaka S+R’s survey of US faculty members has been fielded regularly since 2000. This project provides a periodic snapshot of practices and perceptions related to scholarly communications and information usage. The scholar-centric nature of the questionnaire ensures that potential changes in research and teaching inform our thinking, not only about academic libraries and scholarly publishing, but about changes in the educational enterprise more broadly. Our findings this cycle are a strong indication of the value of an ongoing tracking enterprise…
Blog Post
March 28, 2016
What’s Different about Digital Leadership?
Is leadership for a digital organization any different than any other kind of leadership? I think so, and that is the topic I chose to address when the National Federation of Advanced Information Systems (NFAIS) named me the 2016 Miles Conrad Memorial Lecturer last month. At this late stage in my career, I have the luxury of reflecting back on the growth and change I have seen in the library profession and thinking about why certain types of leadership have…
Issue Brief
March 28, 2016
Library Leadership for the Digital Age
The National Federation of Advanced Information Systems (NFAIS) honored me at its annual meeting in February with the Miles Conrad Award. I had an opportunity to give a lecture on any topic of my choosing. Leadership for the library profession has been a career-long interest, so I focused on what kind of leadership is required for the digital environment. In this Issue Brief, I include the highlights of the talk. In the February 29, 2016 issue of The New Yorker,…
Blog Post
March 23, 2016
Library Acquisitions Pilot: Looking At The Data
In an earlier blog post we discussed a methodology we are testing to gauge whether a cross institutional analysis of library acquisitions may be possible in the future by leveraging next generation integrated library systems (ILS), which store libraries’ data in the cloud and, in some cases, allow for one member library to generate a report that can be run easily for any of their customers. In this post we share a dashboard (below) that shows how we could…
Blog Post
March 16, 2016
Survey Administration Best Practices: Designing Survey Questionnaires
Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education. Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students. More than 70…