July 10, 2014
Ithaka S+R Releases Report on Hybrid Classroom Experiments at the University System of Maryland
New York, NY—During the same month that The New York Times declared 2012 the “Year of the MOOC,” Ithaka S+R partnered with the University System of Maryland (USM) to determine the feasibility of using MOOCs in new ways—incorporating MOOCs and other online technologies into undergraduate classrooms. The results of that study are available today: Interactive Online Learning on Campus: Testing MOOCs and Other Platforms in Hybrid Formats in the University System of Maryland.
Over the course of a year, Ithaka S+R worked with faculty on seven Read More...
June 26, 2014
NISO's Open Discovery Initiative
Today, NISO is releasing the recommended practice for its Open Discovery Initiative. This important initiative is intended to bring greater order to the indexed discovery services that have achieved a market penetration of roughly three-quarters of US academic libraries, according to the most recent Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013 (pages 53-54). With such a high share of libraries positioning indexed discovery services as the primary discovery interface for their users, it is essential to address the concerns—both real and perceived—about Read More...
June 24, 2014
Participatory Design and the New Data Visualization Lab at the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is set to open a new data visualization lab with a direct link to the University’s supercomputers. Ithaka S+R provided support in the design phase by collecting information through interviews and workshops and identifying key requirements for the space itself and for the technology to be installed in the space.
The Visualization-Innovation-Science-Technology-Application (VISTA) Collaboratory lab will be used in many ways including research in the sciences, engineering and optics as well as the humanities and Read More...
June 18, 2014
New Report—Sustaining the Digital Humanities: Host Institution Support beyond the Start-Up Phase
Digital Humanities has captured the imagination of many faculty, staff and students in recent years. Experts in the field, from veterans of Digital Humanities Centers to library digitization units, know well the challenges that digital projects can pose, just to keep content and software up to date and relevant. As more scholars experiment with building digital humanities resources, how are their host institutions approaching the challenge of supporting these efforts over time?
Ithaka S+R has just published Sustaining the Digital Humanities Read More...
May 28, 2014
Driving With Data: A Roadmap for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Academic Libraries
COUNTER-compliant usage statistics, service assessments, peer benchmarking—librarians have been gathering different types of data for some time, using data to measure the usage of their resources, the quality of their services, and how they stack up against similar institutions. But could library leaders collect data differently? In this Issue Brief Deanna Marcum and Roger Schonfeld suggest an approach where library leaders start not with the data that are easy to gather, but with the problems they are trying to solve. What does it take to Read More...
May 22, 2014
Fair Use in the Visual Arts: Developing a Code of Best Practices
Today, I participated in a meeting convened by the College Art Association (CAA) as part of the project led by Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi to develop a code of best practices in fair use for the visual arts. CAA is convening ten of these sessions as one input into the development of this code. You may have seen the paper that this project produced earlier this year, on Copyright, Permissions, and Fair Use among Visual Artists and the Academic and Museum Visual Arts Communities, which formed the basis for the discussion. Our group of Read More...
May 08, 2014
The Ithaka S+R Local Survey at UT San Antonio
In the 2013 US Library Survey, a very high percentage of respondents from doctoral and master’s institutions (94% and 87% respectively) noted that their universities offer some type of online courses. And roughly half of respondents from doctoral and master’s institutions consider “providing special services for students enrolled in online or hybrid courses” to be a high priority.
To best develop such services, librarians need intelligence about how their faculty approach online teaching. With this in mind, the University of Texas at San Read More...
April 29, 2014
New Report: Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians
During the last year, Ithaka S+R interviewed more than 70 faculty members, curators, librarians, visual resources professionals, and museum professionals in order to learn how art historians’ research practices are evolving in the digital age. Today, we are pleased to announce the publication of that study’s results: Supporting the Research Practices of Art Historians.
Intended primarily for the museums, libraries, academic departments, and visual resources centers that support research in art history within the U.S., this project focused on Read More...
April 14, 2014
Technology to the Rescue: Can Technology-Enhanced Education Help Public Flagship Universities Meet Their Challenges?
How might public flagships meet some of their most pressing challenges? Earlier this month, Ithaka S+R completed a study on behalf of Lumina Foundation to understand the growing but contested role of technology-enhanced education at these universities. In this issue brief, Deanna Marcum, Ithaka S+R's Managing Director, offers an abbreviated look at the study's findings on how public flagships are addressing the need to increase access to education, contain costs, improve student learning outcomes, and increase institutional efficiency.
Read More...
April 14, 2014
Discovery in the Library—Shifting Ground?
Helping users find content is one of the fundamental services that academic libraries have historically provided. As we have tracked in the Ithaka S+R survey of library deans and directors, it is also an area where there have been important and fast-moving changes. In the 2010 survey, library directors saw discovery as an area for increased investment, and many libraries subsequently put money into new-to-the-market index-based discovery services that promised to bring their collections together into a single search tool. Discovery services, Read More...