Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
March 17, 2014
Sustaining Public History Projects
On March 22, at the National Council of Public History meeting in Monterey, California, we will be presenting on “From Antiquarians to Deadheads. Lessons from ‘Searching for Sustainability: Strategies from Eight Digitized Special Collections’” with our colleagues James David Moran from the American Antiquarian Society and Robin Chandler of UC Santa Cruz (home of the Grateful Dead Archive Online). We’re looking forward to learning from our audience of public historians how they approach the creation and ongoing preservation of…
Blog Post
March 13, 2014
News Coverage of the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013
The March 11 publication of the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013 has garnered some immediate media coverage: Ian Chant, “Ithaka Study Shows Shifting Priorities Among Academic Librarians,” Library Journal. Jennifer Howard, “What Matters to Academic-Library Directors? Information Literacy,” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Carl Straumsheim, “Beyond eBooks,” Inside Higher Ed. Michael Todd, “State of the Stacks: Academic Libraries in a Digital Age,” Social Science Space.
Research Report
March 11, 2014
Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013
In the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013 report we examine how the leaders of academic libraries are approaching systemic changes in their environment and the opportunities and constraints they face in leading their organizations. While exploring key topics covered in our 2010 survey of library directors, such as strategic planning, collecting practices, and library services, in 2013 we also introduced a new emphasis on organizational dynamics, leadership issues, and undergraduate services. The 2013 Ithaka S+R Library Survey was sent…
Blog Post
March 6, 2014
Opening the Textbook
New Opportunities for Libraries and Publishers?
What solutions might we find within our community to solve the problem of rising textbook prices? In our latest issue brief, Nancy Maron, Ithaka S+R’s Program Director for Sustainability and Scholarly Communications, looks at recent trends in textbook publishing and suggests that collaborations between university presses and academic libraries might yield a new breed of textbook more aligned to the needs of faculty and students. Interested? Download “Opening the Textbook: New Opportunities for Libraries and Publishers?”…
Blog Post
February 14, 2014
Designing a New Academic Library from Scratch
In our latest issue brief, Ithaka S+R Senior Anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster asks what it would be like to design academic libraries based not on precedent, but rather on everything we can learn right now about the work practices of the people who already use them. Foster demonstrates how through participatory design we can build a new type of library that considers both the practical needs of the community and the higher ideals of cultural institutions. Interested?…
Issue Brief
February 14, 2014
Designing a New Academic Library from Scratch
In this issue brief, Ithaka S+R senior anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster asks what it would be like to design academic libraries based not on precedent, but rather on everything we can learn right now about the work practices of the people who already use them. Foster demonstrates how through participatory design we can build a new type of library that considers both the practical needs of the community and the higher ideals of cultural institutions.
Blog Post
February 12, 2014
The Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey at SUNY Potsdam
Twenty-eight colleges and universities have signed on to administer Ithaka S+R’s Local Faculty Survey since we initiated this service, and librarians are beginning to tell us about the impact of the surveys on their campuses. We recently caught up with Jenica Rogers, Library Director at SUNY Potsdam, who is using the survey results as she drafts her library’s next strategic plan. SUNY Potsdam’s provost also plans to incorporate the data from the survey into her proposal to create a…
Blog Post
January 29, 2014
Discovering Discoverability at ALA Midwinter
Last Sunday at ALA, I attended a presentation by Mary Somerville, University Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, focusing on discoverability. Somerville recently co-authored a white paper on Collaborative Improvements in the Discoverability of Scholarly Content with Lettie Conrad of SAGE. I was glad to be able to participate as one of the interviewees in the Somerville-Conrad paper, which highlights some of the remarkable progress that has been made in discovery for scholarly purposes in recent years and makes…
Issue Brief
December 10, 2013
Stop the Presses
Is the monograph headed toward an e-only future?
Can we expect the print monograph to disappear anytime soon? While the road to a fully digital future for scholarly monographs is not clearly in sight, the widespread availability of ebooks is already transforming researchers' reading habits. As librarians and publishers consider their options, they must take into account how the usage behavior of academics is evolving. In this Issue Brief, Roger Schonfeld explores the challenges and possibilities if we "Stop the Presses."
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Searching for Sustainability
Strategies from Eight Digitized Special Collections
This report aims to address one of the biggest challenges facing libraries and cultural heritage organizations: how to move their special collections into the 21st century through digitization while developing successful strategies to make sure those collections remain accessible and relevant over time. Through a cooperative agreement as part of the National Leadership Grants Program, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in partnership with Ithaka S+R, to undertake in-depth case studies…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Sustainable growth through collaborative partnerships The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), created in 2006, is the result of a collaboration of ten natural history museum and botanical garden libraries seeking to digitize core taxonomic literature and to make it free and openly available throughout the world. Today, the BHL includes fifteen member institutions whose efforts have shaped a collection of over 60,000 titles. It has developed beyond project status to become a service that researchers in systematic biology have integrated into…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History
Cornell University
Upfront investment in user-friendly back-end systems allows for continual growth The Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History (HEARTH) is a digitized collection of academic and popular monographs and journals comprising the core literature of home economics, or, as it is more commonly known today, human ecology. Created at Cornell University’s Mann Library, which serves primarily Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Human Ecology, HEARTH was launched in 2003 with the support of a two-year…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Grateful Dead Archive Online
University of California at Santa Cruz
Cultivating a targeted user group for support and content Few archives come with a built-in fan base. The Grateful Dead Archive Online is distinguished from many other academic special collections by the variety of media it holds, from concert tickets to audio files and art created by fans of the band, and by its potential audience, the many thousands of fans of the Grateful Dead. Support for the Archive has come from grant funding, private donors, and from this fan…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Quakers and Slavery
Haverford College
Shared infrastructure supports long-term sustainability and modest growth Launched in 2009, Quakers and Slavery is an online collection of letters, images, and other materials related to the role of Quakers in the American abolition movement. A collaboration between Haverford College and Swarthmore College, the collection aligns closely with the missions of these Quaker-founded institutions. Quakers and Slavery is one of the most visited sites on Triptych, the platform for digitized special collections shared by the Tri-College partnership of Haverford, Swarthmore,…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Vanderbilt University
Securing institutional support for a national mission On August 5, 1968, Vanderbilt University Libraries (then, the Joint University Libraries) began recording, preserving, and providing access to the news broadcasts of the three national networks. Since then, Vanderbilt has captured more than 40,000 hours of news broadcasts, creating the largest collection of American broadcast news in the world. Most remarkable about this case is the longevity of the Television News Archive. The Archive has always been financially challenged, but it has…
Issue Brief
August 29, 2013
The Space Between
The well-known Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey expanded beyond US faculty members in 2012 to include academics in the UK. We now have a fascinating window for assessing a variety of aspects of national higher education systems, affording us the opportunity to examine their comparative positioning and to consider a variety of possible policy interventions.
Issue Brief
August 1, 2013
Can’t Buy Us Love
The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections
Introduction Research libraries throughout North America are experiencing a massive decline in the use of their general collections[1]—their large and comprehensive collections of printed books and journal volumes purchased in the commercial marketplace. This decline is the inevitable outcome of a massive shift in scholarly publishing from an analog and print-based to a digital and networked one. In this environment, it is no longer obvious that it makes sense for research libraries to continue their traditional practice of…
Research Report
May 14, 2013
Ithaka S+R | Jisc | RLUK
UK Survey of Academics 2012
The UK Survey of Academics 2012, conducted by Ithaka S+R, Jisc, and Research Libraries UK (RLUK), examines the attitudes and behaviours of academics at higher education institutions across the United Kingdom. Our objective is to provide the entire sector, including universities, learned societies, scholarly publishers, and especially academic libraries, with timely findings and analysis that help them plan for the future. The Survey of Academics covers broadly the population of academics across the UK, as well as the opportunity to look…
Research Report
February 21, 2013
Appraising our Digital Investment
Sustainability of Digitized Special Collections in ARL Libraries
Sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and conducted by Ithaka S+R, this study provides insight into how ARL libraries are managing and funding the hundreds of digitized special collections they have created and that they believe to be critical to their futures. This is the first survey of ARL institutions that specifically attempts to understand and benchmark the activities and costs of supporting these collections after they are created. By looking at questions of management, costs, funding sources,…
Blog Post
February 12, 2013
New Ithaka S+R Research Support Services Project in Art History
This winter, as part of the Research Support Services program, Ithaka S+R is launching a new investigation of researcher practices and support services needs in the field of art history. Our goal is to examine the evolving needs of researchers on a field-specific basis in order to best understand how libraries and other information services providers meet these needs. We are grateful to the Getty Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their joint funding of this project. Our…