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?"
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March 06, 2014
Nancy L. Maron
March 03, 2014
Register Now for Webinar on March 11--"Insights from Academic Library Directors"
We invite you to join us on March 11, 2014, at 1:00 PM (EST), for a free webinar on the Ithaka S+R 2013 US Library Survey. SAGE, one of the sponsors of the survey, is hosting the 60-minute webinar, which will feature Elisabeth Leonard, Sage's Market Research Analyst, discussing the survey findings with Roger Schonfeld, Ithaka S + R’s Program Director for Libraries, Users, and Scholarly Practices. For more information about the webinar and to register, please visit SAGE's blog.
The webinar will coincide with the public release of the survey Read More...
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? Download "Designing a New Academic Library from Scratch"
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February 14, 2014
Nancy Fried Foster
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 faculty development center for pedagogy and technology. We Read More...
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 recommendations in Read More...