Under the leadership of President Michael Crow, Arizona State University (ASU) has established a straightforward vision to guide the activities of the institution and has stuck to those basic guiding principles for over a decade:

To establish ASU as the model for the New American University, measured not by who we exclude, but rather by who we include and how they succeed; pursuing research and discovery that benefits the public good; assuming major responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality and health and well-being of the community. 

Public research universities are under great pressure to increase access, lower costs, and improve instruction, even as they face diminishing financial support from the states they serve. Against this backdrop, Ithaka S+R, with funding from Lumina Foundation, undertook a study of ten institutions in the Public Flagships Network (PFN). Over the course of the 2013/2014 academic year, Ithaka S+R interviewed 214 individuals, ranging from presidents and provosts to key administrative officers and staff, to department chairs and faculty.

Online technologies show promise for educating more people in innovative ways that can lower costs for universities and colleges, but how can higher education leaders move forward, confident in their choices about how best to integrate these technologies on their campuses? With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ithaka S+R is working to help provide the answer.

As more and more scholars experiment with building digital humanities (DH) resources, how are their host institutions approaching the challenge of supporting these diverse projects over time?

What do the digital humanities look like on your campus? What types of projects are your faculty undertaking? Which will require longer-term support, and where will that support come from? What roles do your service units, centers, and digital labs play in the various life-cycle stages, and is this clear to faculty? This toolkit will help administrators create a coherent institutional strategy for supporting digital humanities activities and the valuable outputs that they generate.

This study, funded by the Getty Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, looks at how art historians' research practices are evolving in the digital age.

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 five key areas:

1. The emergence of "digital art history," and how it is diverging from the broader understanding of the digital humanities.

There are fewer barriers than ever before for those who wish to build something on the web, whether an online journal, a website with tools for teaching, or a digitized collection of rare and unique materials. Yet, no matter who creates these resources or how they were initially funded, there are substantial costs involved in keeping digital resources up and running for the long term while continuing to deliver value to those who use them. 

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.

Building User Engagement for a Sustainable Future