CNI News

Last week, Ithaka released its 2009 Faculty survey — the fourth in a series — that explores the views, attitudes and behaviors of faculty with respect to libraries, information resources, and scholarly communication. There was a standing-room-only presentation at the Spring CNI meeting earlier this week in Baltimore covering the highlights of the survey.

Ithaka is offering a series of webinars that will explore major themes of the survey in depth, an excellent opportunity for interested groups to further explore the findings.

I’ve reproduced below both information about the webinars, and then information about the report itself.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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Following last week’s release of Ithaka S+R’s Faculty Survey 2009 (http://bit.ly/aJP4pl), we are pleased to announce a series of webinars that will explore each of the major themes of this survey in depth. Each webinar will focus on an individual chapter of the full report, providing the opportunity for a targeted discussion of the findings of our study and their implications for libraries, publishers, and scholarly societies.

Webinar Schedule:

Chapter 1: Discovery and the Evolving Role of the Library
When:  April 20th, 3pm – 4pm EDT
About:  Basic scholarly information use practices have shifted rapidly in recent years and, as a result, the academic library is increasingly being disintermediated from the discovery process, presenting libraries with some key challenges but also the opportunity to reallocate resources to other priorities.
Who should attend: Librarians, university administrators, and others interested in the future of the academic library in the digital age
How to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/793444185

Chapter 2: The Format Transition for Scholarly Works
When: April 29th, 3pm – 4pm EDT
About: Faculty members’ growing comfort in relying exclusively on digital versions of scholarly materials opens new opportunities for libraries, new business models for publishers, and new challenges for preservation.
Who should attend: Librarians, publishers, and scholarly societies interested in the print-to-electronic transition
How to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/830016017

Chapter 3: Scholarly Communications
When: May 5th, 3pm – 4pm EDT
Publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, faculty members, and others have laid significant groundwork for reforming various aspects of the scholarly communications system, but faculty attitudes are driven by incentives and suggest the need for continued leadership.
Who should attend: Publishers, librarians, scholarly societies, and faculty members interested in the changing landscape for scholarly communications
How to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/543934248

We also have an upcoming webinar on our recently released What to Withdraw framework and accompanying decision-support tool; more information is available at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/486363776. We encourage you to attend any or all of these webinars, and to pass along this information to any of your colleagues who you believe might be interested. Thank you very much, and we look forward to hearing your reactions to the Faculty Survey 2009!

Sincerely,
Roger Schonfeld & Ross Housewright

Roger C. Schonfeld
Manager of Research
Ithaka S+R
Tel: 212-500-2338
Fax: 212-500-2366

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In a published report, Faculty Survey 2009: Strategic Insights for Librarians, Publishers, and Societies, Ithaka S+R analyzes responses from over 3,000 faculty members based at US four-year colleges or universities and offers a unique comparative look at 2009 against previous surveys from 2000, 2003, and 2006 on a variety of key questions facing information service organizations and their parent institutions.

Trends in faculty attitudes and behaviors on issues ranging from the library as information gateway and the need for preservation of scholarly material, to their engagement with institutional and disciplinary repositories and thoughts about open access are addressed.  For the first time, Ithaka S+R also looked at the role that scholarly societies play and their value to faculty.

Some of the key findings of this report include:
·         Basic scholarly information use practices have shifted rapidly in recent years and, as a result, the academic library is increasingly being disintermediated from the discovery process, risking irrelevance in one if its core areas.

·         Faculty members’ growing comfort in relying exclusively on digital versions of scholarly materials opens new opportunities for libraries, new business models for publishers, and new challenges for preservation.

·         Despite several years of sustained efforts by publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, faculty members, and others to reform various aspects of the scholarly communications system, a fundamentally conservative set of faculty attitudes continues to impede systematic change.

The full report is freely available at http://bit.ly/aJP4pl. Results will also be presented at the Coalition for Networked Information Spring Meeting in Washington D.C. on April 12, 2010.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments – we look forward to discussing these findings with you and the CNI community.

Sincerely,
Roger and Ross

Roger C. Schonfeld
Manager of Research
Ithaka S+R
Tel: 212-500-2338
Fax: 212-500-2366

Ithaka S+R (www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r) is the strategy and research arm of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. The Ithaka S+R team supports innovation in higher education by working with initiatives and organizations to develop sustainable business models and by conducting research and analysis on the impact of digital media on the academic community as a whole. Insights from these efforts are shared broadly, with more than a dozen reports freely available online. JSTOR, an accessible archive of more than 1,000 scholarly journals and other content, and Portico, a service that preserves scholarly content published in electronic form for future generations, are also part of ITHAKA.