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Topic: Discovery and access

Research Report
April 3, 2017

US Library Survey 2016

The Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2016 examines strategy and leadership issues from the perspective of academic library deans and directors. This project aims to provide academic librarians and higher education leaders with information about chief librarians’ visions and the opportunities and challenges they face in leading their organizations. In fall 2016, we invited library deans and directors at not-for-profit four-year academic institutions across the United States to complete the survey, and we received 722 responses for a response rate of…
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
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
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…
Blog Post
August 22, 2016

Pokémon Stop or Pokémon Go?

Does Pokémon Go deserve a place in our cultural institutions? The stops and gyms are already there and some institutions have already incorporated the game into their programs so it seems like a good time to pose the question. The new Pokémon Go game is based on the Pokémon Game Boy games that were originally released in 1996 and were followed by playing cards, movies, a variety of media productions, and even a theme park. Played on a smartphone, the…
Blog Post
June 16, 2016

Looking at the Barriers to Access and Discovery in the Corporate Sector

Over the past year, I have developed a bit of a reputation in the publisher and publishing technology communities as the user experience “rabble-rouser.” By focusing on my own personal experience as a researcher, I have been able to call attention to the poor quality of information discovery and access workflows. Because publishers and libraries alike have invested substantially in user experience for their own platforms and websites, today it is the pathways between and across services and sites—the workflows—where…
Research Report
June 16, 2016

Barriers to Discovery of and Access to the Scientific Literature in the Corporate Sector

The offices that provide scientific information resources in major research companies – sometimes still called libraries – seek to make these resources available as seamlessly as possible. Barriers exist both for discovery and access. Corporate information professionals also face barriers in administering these information resources. In this project, Ithaka S+R examined the degree to which these various barriers are seen to exist in pharmaceutical, chemical, and food companies. The project had as its objective to inform the design of solutions…
Blog Post
June 15, 2016

Exploring the Research Practices of Academics in the UK

UK Survey of Academics 2015 Published

Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing the UK Survey of Academics, with our partners Jisc and RLUK. Fielded in autumn 2015, this is the second cycle of this project and therefore the first opportunity to examine trends over time. It uses a large-scale sample of academics from across the UK higher education sector. In addition, nearly a dozen individual institutions partnered with us to provide targeted help to ensure that our survey reached their academics. Given that the…
Research Report
June 15, 2016

UK Survey of Academics 2015

Ithaka S+R | Jisc | RLUK

Research is changing. New technology brings increased computational power and virtual representation of physical objects, allowing us to pose and answer previously unimaginable research questions. Big data can be mixed, linked and mined to reveal new unsuspected connections. Enhanced connectivity allows us to collaborate beyond traditional geographic and disciplinary boundaries. Funders demand greater demonstration of impact and engagement with non-academic communities and audiences. As research changes, so do researchers. Their behaviour and expectations shift, evolving to take advantage of new…
Blog Post
June 14, 2016

On Archives Users Present and Future

Notes from the ACA Conference

It was perhaps unsurprising that the 2016 annual Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) conference was themed “‘Futur Proche’: Archives and Innovation.” “Futur proche,” refers to the future tense in French and is also arguably the primary orientation of most discussions about archives and their users. Archivists’ pre-occupation with the future reflects the underlying preservation mission of archives. Barbara Craig cogently defines the mission of archives is to “acquire, preserve and make available records of enduring value” (135) and that…
Blog Post
April 4, 2016

Tracking Trends in Faculty Research, Publishing, and Teaching

The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey Findings Released

This morning we published 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. What does this latest snapshot show us? Some key findings include: Reversing a…
Research Report
April 4, 2016

Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015

Ithaka S+R’s survey of US faculty members has been fielded regularly since 2000. This project provides a periodic snapshot of practices and perceptions related to scholarly communications and information usage. The scholar-centric nature of the questionnaire ensures that potential changes in research and teaching inform our thinking, not only about academic libraries and scholarly publishing, but about changes in the educational enterprise more broadly. Our findings this cycle are a strong indication of the value of an ongoing tracking enterprise…
Blog Post
March 9, 2016

If Chat Is the Next Interface, Can Libraries Reestablish Their Place in the Research Workflow?

Silicon Valley observers are starting to wonder if an interface change is underway.  Mobile apps displaced the dominance of the web over the last several years, threatening substantial disruption for advertising behemoths like Google and leaving libraries and publishers ill-prepared to support emerging user needs. If another interface displacement of this magnitude is gathering, there is a major opportunity for libraries to leapfrog ahead. Today, some observers…
Blog Post
February 25, 2016

On Seams, Seamlessness, and Methodology

Earlier this month, I encountered a thought-provoking talk by Tim Sherratt making the very strong argument that seamlessness should not be our only goal in designing digital library systems. The talk is a year old but it is well worth reading today. I thank Donna Lanclos for tweeting about it recently. I have argued strongly that we need to reduce the barriers to the use of…
Blog Post
February 8, 2016

The Retraction Landscape: Notes from the NISO Webinar

On January 13th the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) held a webinar exploring the landscape of retractions in scholarly communications. The webinar featured three experts on the subject: Ivan Oransky from Retraction Watch, Veronique Kiermer from PLOS, and Kirsty Meddings from CrossRef. The three of them painted a picture of that landscape (like many of the painted landscapes that stay with us) that was thoroughly bleak, but ultimately hopeful. Oransky opened with a comical yet troubling prank…
Blog Post
January 14, 2016

Library Assessment: Notes from ALA Midwinter 2016

At ALA Midwinter in Boston, we attended several valuable sessions on assessment, evaluation, and data visualization. Here’s a roundup of what we heard. ARL Library Assessment Forum Kenning Arlitsch, dean of the library at Montana State University, reported on his grant project, Measuring Up: Assessing Accuracy of Reported Use and Impact of Digital Repositories. While at Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Arlitsch observed that the reported use of the digital collections at the university’s three libraries was…
Blog Post
December 18, 2015

When Academic Library Budgets Make the National News

The issue of rising journal subscription costs in a climate where academic library budgets are primarily flat or in a state of decline, is well-documented and oft-discussed amongst librarians (see, for example, these articles in Library Journal and PLOS One). Yet it is debatable the extent to which academics and students are engaged with this issue. And the possibility of the public-at-large caring? Almost unthinkable. Meanwhile, in Canada, the national public broadcaster recently ran three stories on academic…
Blog Post
November 2, 2015

The Consistency of Data

Data-driven decision making brings with it—for policy makers, advocates, businesses—the promise of objectivity. In some cases, this can instead be the illusion of infallibility. We don’t doubt our ability to make smart decisions with well-analyzed data, but what about the origins of that data? Over this year, Joseph Esposito, Roger Schonfeld and I have been conducting a research project studying the acquisitions of academic libraries, towards the end of better understanding various trends among vendors, publishers, disciplines and formats.