Topic: Research practices
Issue Brief
July 26, 2017
Rethinking Liaison Programs for the Humanities
For generations, most research libraries have had employees with deep subject expertise. Once known as bibliographers, these scholars and librarians originally focused their efforts on selection for collection building. Today, there is real anxiety about the role of subject expertise and academic liaisons in research libraries. We argue that evidence about scholars’ practices and needs should be a key input into reorganizing library subject expertise.[1] Librarian subject expertise and liaison roles At many research libraries, the role of…
Blog Post
July 17, 2017
Don’t File It Away: Creating Actionable Survey Results
You’ve developed a thoughtful questionnaire, gathered responses, generated meaningful, insightful findings, and now want to share these results to more widely inform decision-making. How do you ensure that these findings are communicated effectively to the right individuals? In spring 2016, Penn State University fielded the Ithaka S+R Undergraduate Student Survey and faced the challenging task of communicating findings from the survey, which covered perspectives from 2,000+ students using 37 libraries across 20 campuses. The Ithaka S+R local surveys, which…
Blog Post
July 11, 2017
Agricultural Research, Data Management, Funder Mandates: Where Do We Go From Here?
The latest Ithaka S+R report on agriculture scholars summarizes the diverse research being undertaken in across the agricultural sciences and suggests some ways forward for the agricultural information community. One key theme in the report focuses on the work undertaken by researchers in the agricultural sciences around data management. The breadth of the field is reflected in the variety of methods and data generated by scholars, ranging from genetics to economics to field-based biology. Across these domains, a common…
Blog Post
July 6, 2017
Assessing the Information Practices, Needs, and Perceptions of Strategically Important Populations
Partnering to Develop the Ithaka S+R International Graduate/Professional Student Survey Module
While enrollment of international students has grown considerably in the last decade in the United States, investigations into their information practices and library needs are limited in number and are rarely conducted in a manner that enables comparative analysis of international and domestic graduate students. At the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC), international graduate students represent a significant portion of the total number of graduate students as well as of the total number of international students…
Blog Post
June 7, 2017
How Can We Better Support Agriculture Scholars?
Today Ithaka S+R releases its in-depth report on the research activities of agriculture scholars as part of its ongoing program to explore the research activities of scholars by discipline. For Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Agriculture Scholars, we explore the breadth of agriculture research activities in U.S. higher education towards fostering information services that will support those endeavors. As the report highlights, agriculture is a particularly compelling field because of its broad scope and wider societal relevance,…
Research Report
June 7, 2017
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Agriculture Scholars
For America’s land-grant universities, agriculture is a field of bedrock historical importance and vital current relevance. While it is sometimes perceived by the general public as a field to help small farmers modernize, today it also includes advanced genetic research, economic and policy issues around food security, and deep engagement with climate change. As a rich interdisciplinary field at the heart of so many research universities, the practices and needs of agriculture are of interest to many. For that reason,…
Blog Post
May 30, 2017
Re-Framing Advanced Subject Degrees for Library Work
Late last week my librarian twitter-sphere erupted into a new round of what is a regular topic of debate about the place for advanced subject degrees in the profession (for example, see here and here). Proponents argue that advanced subject degrees can directly inform library work by providing in-depth knowledge into a subject area being served. Proponents also argue for the indirect benefit of gaining experiential knowledge into the processes of academia. Opponents highlight that these perceived values…
Blog Post
May 23, 2017
Leveraging Regret: Maximizing Survey Participation at the Duke University Libraries
Students are a notoriously difficult population to recruit for surveys. To combat this, Ithaka S+R has developed a number of strategies to encourage participation in our local surveys of undergraduate and graduate/professional students. Crafting effective invitation and reminder messages, determining when to send these messages, and ensuring that your communications are received and opened are all necessary steps in garnering maximum levels of participation from any population. For our local surveys of students specifically, we have found…
Blog Post
February 8, 2017
Collaborating to Support Religious Studies Scholars
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…
Research Report
February 8, 2017
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Religious Studies Scholars
Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services Program is a series of projects that investigate the research support needs of scholars by their discipline. In 2016 Ithaka S+R examined the changing research methods and practices of academic religious studies scholars in the United States, with the goal of identifying services to better support them. The project was undertaken collaboratively with research teams at 18 academic libraries and the American Theological Library Association with guidance from an advisory committee. The goal of this…
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 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 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 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 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…