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...
April 07, 2014
Webinar: Writing A Sustainability Plan for your Digital Resource
It's grant season. That means researchers from universities, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions are competing to secure funding for innovative digital resources. But potential funders want more than just interesting ideas—they want evidence that projects will continue to deliver value well after their creation. Do you have a plan for ensuring your project’s sustainability?
Join Ithaka S+R for a one-hour webinar on the basics of building a sustainability plan. You will learn:
What a sustainability plan includes and how it Read More...
April 07, 2014
Notes from the Regional Print Management Symposium
At the end of March, OCLC Research, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), and Ohio State University, hosted a very interesting symposium on print collections management. The symposium’s focus was on how collections of print books might be more effectively managed given changing usage patterns and needs for print books, and changing priorities for the allocation of library spaces.
The symposium’s jumping-off point was a new research report by Brian Lavoie and Constance Malpas, which analyzes Ohio State University’s print book Read More...
March 27, 2014
Sustaining Digital Resources for the Long Term
With generous funding from the Jisc-led Strategic Content Alliance (SCA), Ithaka S+R has developed A Guide to the Best Revenue Models and Funding Sources for Your Digital Resources. The report will support project leaders who are actively maintaining digital resources—and who seek funding models that support continued investment in their projects for the benefit of their users, over time.
The world of digital creation has moved beyond major research institutions. It now includes museums, small historical societies, and local archives, and Read More...
March 25, 2014
Leveraging the Liaison Model
What role might librarians play in building the 21st Century research university? How can librarians effectively assess the impact of the expertise, services, and resources they deliver to the academic community? In our latest issue brief, Anne Kenney, the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian at Cornell University, explores how librarians can leverage the liaison model to demonstrate “that the library is more than a purveyor of content and that its expertise is an essential component of the academic knowledge infrastructure on and off campus Read More...
March 24, 2014
The Ithaka S+R Local Survey at Swarthmore
In our recent report on the 2013 US Library Survey, we noted that faculty members and library directors have different views on the role librarians play in information literacy education. Seventy-two percent of library directors agreed with the statement “Developing the research skills of undergraduate students related to locating and evaluating scholarly information is principally my library’s responsibility,” compared with just 22% of faculty.
This is an area where participants in our local faculty survey have paid special attention to Read More...
March 19, 2014
Ithaka S+R and the CIC's Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction
In today's edition of Inside Higher Ed, Carl Straumsheim writes about a new Council of Independent Colleges initiative that "will bring 20 of the organization’s members together in a Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction."
Ithaka S+R is delighted to serve as an advisor for this initiative. In this capacity Ithaka S+R is undertaking three roles:
1. Advising the CIC in the program design, helping to select members of the consortium, and contributing to communications with members.
2. Supporting consortium members as they design and Read More...
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 digital projects Read More...
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.
Read More...
March 06, 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?"
Read More...
March 06, 2014
Nancy L. Maron