Topic: Libraries
Blog Post
August 10, 2022
How Can Data Librarians Support Data Communities? Part Two
An Interview with Amanda Rinehart
Data communities provide social and practical incentives for scientists to voluntarily share and reuse data with colleagues. In order for data communities to emerge and grow, they need support. Information professionals, such as data librarians and research computing specialists, can advise data communities on best practices for data sharing and help them create or improve the required infrastructure, such as online repositories and metadata schemas.
Blog Post
August 9, 2022
Sustaining Scientific Data Sharing Communities
Findings from an Incubation Workshop
The sharing of research data is essential to open science, and major funders have made significant investments in building an infrastructure of domain and generalist data repositories to support data sharing. While barriers to data sharing remain a challenge, many communities of researchers actively and voluntarily share and reuse data to advance science in areas of mutual interest. Understanding the successes and challenges these “data communities” face is important to providing support for their evolving needs as they grow, and…
Research Report
August 9, 2022
Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science
Findings from an Incubation Workshop Series
Several recent studies have indicated that large numbers of researchers in many STEM fields now accept the value of openly sharing research data. Yet, the actual practice of sharing data—especially in forms that comply with FAIR principles—remains a challenge for many researchers to integrate into their workflows and prioritize among the demands on their time. In many disciplines and subfields, data sharing is still mostly an ideal, honored more in the breach than in practice.
Blog Post
July 21, 2022
Gearing Up for the Ithaka S+R National Library Director Survey
This fall, Ithaka S+R will be fielding the sixth iteration of our Library Director Survey. While we ran a special cycle of the survey in 2020 to track pandemic-related decision-making among academic libraries, as well as changing perspectives on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and anti-racism, this upcoming survey marks the return to our triennial cycle, established in 2010. The Library Director Survey 2022 examines the strategic and leadership perspectives of…
Blog Post
July 19, 2022
Supporting the Future Discovery and Use of Digital Content
New Report
Regardless of their size, location, or the communities they serve, all heritage organizations are involved in curating digital content, whether that content is born-digital or reformatted from physical materials. There are a range of risks involved in managing this content, including technical malfunctions, media obsolescence, and organizational failures—just to name a few. In light of such threats, digital preservation to enable the discovery, access, and use of content by designated user communities over time…
Research Report
July 19, 2022
The Effectiveness and Durability of Digital Preservation and Curation Systems
In August 2020, with funding from the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS), Ithaka S+R launched an 18-month research project to examine and assess the sustainability of these third-party digital preservation systems. In addition to a broad examination of the landscape, we more closely studied eight systems: APTrust, Archivematica, Arkivum, Islandora, LIBNOVA, MetaArchive, Samvera and Preservica.
Blog Post
July 14, 2022
Tracking the Research, Teaching, and Publishing Practices of Faculty Members Nationally
US Faculty Survey
We are excited to announce the publication of the US Faculty Survey 2021. Through this national survey, we have been able to track the changing research, teaching, and publishing practices of faculty members within higher education triennially since early digital transformation at the turn of the century. Against the backdrop of the global pandemic and its numerous impacts on many different facets of higher education, this eighth cycle of the survey illuminates how earlier research and instructional trends…
Research Report
July 14, 2022
Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2021
The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey has tracked the changing research, teaching, and publishing practices of faculty members within higher education triennially since early digital transformation at the turn of the century. This project has aimed to provide actionable findings to help colleges and universities, among other relevant stakeholders such as academic libraries, learned societies, and scholarly publishers, make evidence-based decisions for their planning and strategy.
Blog Post
June 30, 2022
How Can Data Librarians Support Data Communities?
An Interview with Jordan Wrigley
Data communities provide social and practical incentives for scientists to voluntarily share and reuse data with colleagues. In order for data communities to emerge and grow, they need support. Information professionals, such as data librarians and research computing specialists, can advise data communities on best practices for data sharing and help them create or improve the required infrastructure, such as online repositories and metadata schemas. However, research scientists and information professionals rarely have structured opportunities to meet together,…
Blog Post
June 14, 2022
Looking Forward to ALA Annual 2022
A Banner Year for Librarians Serving Incarcerated Patrons
The American Library Association (ALA) will be holding its annual conference next week (June 23-28) in Washington DC, in person for the first time since 2019. The conference theme, “together again,” points to the critical importance of building and sustaining community, and I am especially excited to see that the conference schedule has multiple sessions that will provide opportunities for librarians who serve incarcerated people to connect and learn. Even in an increasingly censorius national…
Blog Post
June 13, 2022
The Library’s Role in Facilitating Users’ Experiences Navigating Computing and Data Services
An Interview with Susan Ivey, Director of the Research Facilitation Service at North Carolina State University
Since 2012, when Ithaka S+R began systematic exploration of the changing needs and practices of researchers, the stunning growth in the accessibility of large datasets and the computing power necessary to work with them has transformed research practices across disciplines. As big data methods have spread, universities have responded by expanding their research support service offerings. Libraries have been the most active players in this space, but many campus units—including information technology offices, research computing centers, and academic…
Past Event
June 24, 2022
Library Services to the Justice Involved (LSJI) Roundtable
ITHAKA is proud to be sponsoring the Library Services to the Justice Involved Roundtable at the ALA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. When: Friday, June 24, 2022 at 10:30am – 11:30am Where: Washington Convention Center, 152B Kurtis Tanaka (Ithaka S+R), Stacy Burnett (JSTOR Labs), and Anne Ray (Reveal Digital) will be in attendance. About the roundtable:…
Past Event
June 23, 2022
Ithaka S+R at ALA
Meet up with Nicole Betancourt, Melissa Blankstein, and Kurtis Tanaka
If you are headed to the ALA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, we encourage you to meet up with the Ithaka S+R staff who will be in attendance: Nicole Betancourt, Survey and Research Operations Analyst, runs our local surveys program. Connect with her on Twitter or via email if you would like to reach out about running a survey of your faculty or students in the 2022/23 academic year.
Blog Post
June 9, 2022
Academic Libraries’ Streaming Media Trends in the US and Canada
New Survey Results Available
Libraries are the major purchasers of streaming media for their universities, and they face numerous challenges meeting the growing demand for these resources from students and instructors. Understanding how libraries are currently responding to these challenges and planning for future acquisitions of streaming media are important for both university decision makers and vendors hoping to serve this market. Today Ithaka S+R releases the findings from the most comprehensive survey to date of academic…
Research Report
June 9, 2022
Streaming Media Licensing and Purchasing Practices at Academic Libraries
Survey Results
Researchers have undertaken several important efforts to track how libraries are approaching the streaming media market and troubleshoot the challenges they are encountering, focusing especially on strategies for balancing patron demand with managing costs. Building on those data gathering efforts, this report shares findings from the most comprehensive survey to date of academic library streaming media approaches at four-year institutions in the US and Canada.
Blog Post
May 19, 2022
Assessing the Role of the Community College Library
Innovation, Collaboration, and Taking a Holistic Approach
For the last three years, Ithaka S+R has been examining how academic and student support services at community colleges are organized, funded, and staffed in order to provide insight into how these services can most effectively advance student success. Through this IMLS-funded research initiative, known as Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems (CCASSE), we have fielded two surveys, one of academic and student affairs leaders and one of library directors, as well as conducted interviews with…
Past Event
June 23, 2022
Dylan Ruediger at RBMS 2022
On June 23, Dylan Ruediger will join panelists to discuss the findings from the Teaching with Primary Sources Project and its impact “post”-pandemic. For more information see abstract below. For more information on the conference, please visit this link. Session Title: Does it still fit? Engaging with the Ithaka S+R Teaching with Primary Sources Project “Post”-Pandemic Date: June 23, 2022 Time: 3:00 PM EST Remember that report from Ithaka S+R last spring about supporting the needs of instructors…
Blog Post
April 14, 2022
The Importance of Alignment for the Research Library
Academic libraries exist to serve the needs, over the long-run, of their parent institutions. To be successful, then, it is imperative that each research library regularly works to ensure its ongoing alignment with its parent university. Institutional alignment is, however, a complicated endeavor. In a project Ithaka S+R co-published with ARL and CARL, my colleagues Danielle Cooper, Catharine Bond Hill and I examined the strategic directions of research universities in North America to determine how…
Research Report
April 12, 2022
Aligning the Research Library to Organizational Strategy
Ithaka S+R was commissioned by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) to examine the strategic directions of research universities with the objective of identifying common themes that research libraries can consider in aligning to advance the research and learning mission both individually and collectively. This project draws on interviews and other forms of engagement conducted in 2021 with more than 60 university leaders across research libraries in the US and Canada.
Past Event
April 13, 2022
Roger Schonfield and Deanna Marcum at RLUK DSF
On April 13, Roger Schonfield and Deanna Marcum will discuss their new book, “Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization” at RLUK’s Digital Shift Forum. Please the abstract below. The registration information is available here. Abstract The history of library digitization can provide many important lessons for library leaders today. In this session, Deanna Marcum and Roger Schonfeld, authors of the recently published Along Came Google (Princeton University Press), will have a conversation about some of the key…