Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
February 25, 2016
On Seams, Seamlessness, and Methodology
Earlier this month, I encountered a thought-provoking talk by Tim Sherratt making the very strong argument that seamlessness should not be our only goal in designing digital library systems. The talk is a year old but it is well worth reading today. I thank Donna Lanclos for tweeting about it recently. I have argued strongly that we need to reduce the barriers to the use of…
Blog Post
February 18, 2016
Homework for Hiring
Last year, Deanna Marcum’s issue brief on talent management in academic libraries reflected in part on some of the challenges that academic libraries face in their processes for selection of library staff. Shortly thereafter, Meredith Farkas argued against using “fit” – that ambiguously dangerous catch-all – in hiring and in the workplace. Interviewing as a tool or methodology in a selection process is…
Blog Post
February 8, 2016
The Retraction Landscape: Notes from the NISO Webinar
On January 13th the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) held a webinar exploring the landscape of retractions in scholarly communications. The webinar featured three experts on the subject: Ivan Oransky from Retraction Watch, Veronique Kiermer from PLOS, and Kirsty Meddings from CrossRef. The three of them painted a picture of that landscape (like many of the painted landscapes that stay with us) that was thoroughly bleak, but ultimately hopeful. Oransky opened with a comical yet troubling prank…
Blog Post
February 1, 2016
Leadership for Academic Libraries
Developing leaders for academic libraries is an urgent need, especially at a moment when roles and responsibilities of these organizations are in such flux. One of the longest-running and successful programs, the UCLA Senior Fellows program, seemed to be at risk, only because it is totally dependent upon the extraordinary efforts of a single individual. After extensive discussions with Beverly Lynch, UCLA Professor and head of Senior Fellows, Ithaka S+R commissioned former Senior Fellows participant, Karen Calhoun, to carry out…
Blog Post
January 28, 2016
Artstor-ITHAKA Community Letter
To our creators, partners and users Artstor and ITHAKA Join Forces We are writing to you as a valued member of our community to share the good news that Artstor, the nonprofit provider of the Artstor Digital Library of images and the Shared Shelf platform for cataloguing and digital asset management, will now operate under the umbrella of its fellow nonprofit ITHAKA, the organization that currently operates three other services: JSTOR, Portico and Ithaka S+R. As you may know, Artstor,…
Blog Post
January 28, 2016
Looking at Diversity Across Cultural Institutions in New York City
Diversity and inclusion are of substantial importance across our society. In recent years, Ithaka S+R has had the opportunity to conduct research projects on these issues in our cultural communities. Last year, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation commissioned Ithaka S+R to conduct a large-scale study of the demographic diversity of art museum staff. Today, we release the findings from a similar study of New York City cultural organizations. In this project, funded by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation…
Research Report
January 28, 2016
Diversity in the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Community
New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the United States at a city level, ranking fourth in the country based on 2010 census data.[1] There are over 1,000 cultural organizations in the five boroughs, each with specific ties to communities, each with vastly different organizational structures and sizes, and each integral to the diversity of culture that defines New York City. Over the summer of 2015 many of these organizations participated in a survey…
Blog Post
January 27, 2016
Survey Administration Best Practices: Using Incentives Effectively
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…
Blog Post
January 26, 2016
Redesigning Organizations and Spaces
In the summer of 2014, Yale University integrated eight separate units into a unified Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) that advises teachers, tutors students, leverages technology for teaching and learning, and fosters global teaching and learning partnerships. First an idea, then a plan on paper, and finally a new unit by administrative action, the new CTL became more of a reality when five of the eight constituent units moved into a temporary shared space in the summer of…
Blog Post
January 19, 2016
Religious Studies Project Launch and Training Workshop
My colleague Roger Schonfeld and I launched the religious studies project at Pitts Theology Library at Emory University on January 7 and 8 with the first of two methods training workshops for our institutional collaborators. With funding from lead sponsor the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), as well as the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the religious studies project brings together local research teams from eighteen higher education institutions to investigate the…
Blog Post
January 14, 2016
Library Assessment: Notes from ALA Midwinter 2016
At ALA Midwinter in Boston, we attended several valuable sessions on assessment, evaluation, and data visualization. Here’s a roundup of what we heard. ARL Library Assessment Forum Kenning Arlitsch, dean of the library at Montana State University, reported on his grant project, Measuring Up: Assessing Accuracy of Reported Use and Impact of Digital Repositories. While at Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Arlitsch observed that the reported use of the digital collections at the university’s three libraries was…
Blog Post
December 22, 2015
Looking at the Research Needs of Religious Studies Scholars
This fall, Ithaka S+R announced plans for a series of new projects to examine the research practices of scholars in three diverse fields. These projects are being conducted in close partnership with scholarly societies and libraries and will provide valuable insight for libraries and other service providers of research support services. I am writing today with an update of the strong progress we are making on the first…
Blog Post
December 21, 2015
2015: A Retrospective
The end of 2015 is upon us, and it seems a good time to look back on what we have done well and to identify areas in which we can do better in the new year. The good news—this has been a stellar year for Ithaka S+R publications. In the two program areas—Educational Transformation and Libraries and Scholarly Communication—we have issued 21 research reports, case studies and issue briefs. The Educational Transformation program has focused on case…
Blog Post
December 18, 2015
When Academic Library Budgets Make the National News
The issue of rising journal subscription costs in a climate where academic library budgets are primarily flat or in a state of decline, is well-documented and oft-discussed amongst librarians (see, for example, these articles in Library Journal and PLOS One). Yet it is debatable the extent to which academics and students are engaged with this issue. And the possibility of the public-at-large caring? Almost unthinkable. Meanwhile, in Canada, the national public broadcaster recently ran three stories on academic…
Blog Post
December 3, 2015
Deanna Marcum to Receive 2016 Miles Conrad Award at NFAIS Annual Conference
The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) announced today that Ithaka S+R’s managing director Deanna Marcum will be the recipient of the 2016 Miles Conrad Award. She will receive the award and deliver the Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture at the NFAIS 2016 Annual Conference next February in Philadelphia. Congratulations Deanna! We’re copying the full press release below. For more information about the NFAIS 2016 Annual Conference, please visit the NFAIS website. For Immediate Release: Ithaka S+R’s Deanna Marcum to Receive…
Blog Post
December 2, 2015
A Glimpse of the Future at ITHAKA’s Next Wave Conference
Last month ITHAKA hosted The Next Wave conference. We brought together people from both inside and outside the academy to discuss issues important to the future of education. Our broad theme was data, value, and privacy. As is always the case with ITHAKA meetings, we spent as much time projecting technology’s impact on the future as we did reflecting on how it is affecting us today. In this post I will share a few of the highlights and thought-provoking…
Blog Post
November 30, 2015
Survey Administration Best Practices: Sending Invitation and Reminder Messages
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…
Blog Post
November 18, 2015
Understanding the Role of the Office of Scholarly Communication
Scholarly communication has become a standard feature of academic and research libraries, and a number of research libraries have established an office of scholarly communication as one of its organizational units. Harvard Library established an Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed the open access policy that would be followed by the other schools and institutes of Harvard. The OSC was meant to help the Harvard schools implement open access. The provost’s office at…
Research Report
November 18, 2015
Office of Scholarly Communication
Scope, Organizational Placement, and Planning in Ten Research Libraries
The phrase “scholarly communication” appears often in the description of library roles and responsibilities, but the function is still new enough that it takes different forms in different institutions. There is no common understanding of where it fits into the library’s organizational structure. This landscape review of offices of scholarly communication grows out of research originally conducted by Ithaka S+R for the Harvard Library. Dr. Sarah Thomas, Vice President for the Harvard Library, University Librarian and Roy E. Larsen Librarian…
Blog Post
November 10, 2015
The Art of Observation
The hallmark method of cultural anthropology is participant observation—total immersion in a social milieu and simultaneous scrutiny of it from an outsider perspective. In a fieldwork project, participant observation may last for months or even years and will usually entail careful documentation in notes, recordings, images, and artifacts. The anthropologist analyzes and interprets observational and other data to create a written ethnography, a document about a culture or society. The anthropological kit also includes a far simpler tool: just being…