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 | Ithaka Survey Reports Rising “Ambivalence” to Campus Libraries
In a survey report that measures the perceptions of libraries and their value on campus, researchers at Ithaka say they have found a “growing ambivalence about the campus library” in the digital age. Further, the survey, Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher
Education, also reveals an emerging disconnect between librarians’ perceptions of their roles and the expectations and habits of the faculty they serve.
The report—sure to generate significant discussion in the field—is a deep trend analysis, comparing and analyzing survey data collected in the group’s 2006, 2003, and 2000 faculty surveys, and a 2006 survey of academic librarians. The 2006 faculty survey generated 4100 responses, while the librarian study, which targeted collection development directors, generated 350 responses. In addition to its own data analysis, meanwhile, Ithaka has made the raw data available from both the faculty and librarian studies to those wishing to investigate further. 
Using the data from these surveys, Ithaka “tested” the perceptions of three “roles” of the library—as a “purchaser, an archive, and as a gateway”—with the gateway aspect yielding an eye-opening result. “Although the importance of the library’s role as a gateway to faculty is decreasing, rather dramatically in certain fields,” the report notes, “over 90 percent of librarians list this role as very important, and almost as many expect it to remain very important in five years. Obviously there is a mismatch in perception here.”
Among topics examined in the Ithaka report:
- Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
- Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
- Attitudes toward archiving of both print and electronic resources
- Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes toward digital repositories
- The impact of transitioning to electronic material on library practices
- The place of digital repositories in the campus information-services landscape
- Attitudes toward the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
The report suggests that, ironically, conflicting perceptions of the library may in fact be a sign of success. “One can argue that the library is serving faculty well, providing them with a less mediated research workflow and greater ability to perform their work more quickly and effectively,” researchers note. Still, they conclude the “mismatch in views” on the gateway function is somewhat troublesome. “If librarians view this function as critical, but faculty in certain disciplines find it to be declining in importance, how can libraries, individually or collectively, strategically realign the services that support the gateway function?”
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Downside to Digital Success? Ithaka Report Suggests Library’s Online Resources May Obscure Its Value
Broadly speaking, the recently released Ithaka survey report on perceptions of the campus library found few surprises. Faculty researchers increasingly prefer electronic resources, and most librarians have been eager and aggressive in offering digital solutions—as expected. But as librarians offer more digital services remotely and otherwise embed themselves further upstream in the research process, does the hard work—and significant expenditures—of the library risk being overlooked by faculty?
“An important lesson is that the library is in many ways falling off the radar screens of faculty,” the report’s authors conclude. They note that while researchers may not use the library as their primary “gateway to information,” in the age of the search engine, and may no longer feel “a significant dependence on the library” in their research process, the library does play essential roles in this process—not the least of which is managing and paying for the resources used, a process often largely invisible to faculty. “In short, although librarians may still be providing significant value to their constituency, the value of their brand is decreasing.”
Notably, the survey also found that many of the high-profile issues concerning librarians—including open access, institutional repositories (IRs), e-books, and preservation of digital resources, have not yet been widely absorbed by faculty.
- Regarding open access: circulation and wide readership in the field still guide faculty publishing decisions, researchers found, with faculty “far less interested” in whether a journal is freely available.
- Regarding IRs: despite becoming a hot topic of late, almost two thirds of faculty are still not even sure if their campus has a digital repository—and less than a third report contributing to one.
- Regarding e-books: only a minority of faculty members currently use them—which raises yet another disconnect, as “many librarians consider the provisioning of e-books an important role,” and “substantially more expect” it to be more vital in the next five years.
Preservation issues, meanwhile, for both digital and print resources, loom as perhaps the greatest challenge for libraries. “The preservation of electronic journal content is already important to more librarians than is preservation of traditional library materials,” the report noted. However, as interest in digital preservation grows, emphasis on traditional preservation is shrinking, setting up a potential problem: what will happen to traditional library resources—and the librarians that tend to them?
The data show that many in the academic community may be making a dangerous assumption—that print preservation will be taken care of by the largest libraries. Librarians at the largest institutions, however, report that they “already view print preservation as less of a priority than their smaller college colleagues.” And, they expect it to decline in importance more steeply.
Turning away from print preservation is not unexpected—and is appropriate given the reliance on e-journals today. However, the fate of traditional print resources as libraries make the necessarily “local” decisions about their print collections is a major concern. “In an earlier generation, the locally-focused decision-making led to disaster in the microfilming of newspaper collections,” the report observed. “Without a system-level perspective, local decision-making on print preservation may threaten the community-wide imperative that an appropriate number of print artifacts survive. Some sort of collective action may be needed here in order to avoid any losses.”
The report is quick to note that most surveyed hold the campus library in high regard. Nevertheless, it offers a sobering, overarching observation: “Information—the historic province of the library—is the focus of more attention than ever before. Yet, the profile and relevance of the library is in decline.”
Librarian reaction to the report has been somewhat muted so far, as many are surely still digesting the significant amount of data in the just-released report. On the ACRL blog, however, Steven Bell noted a key limitation. “Where this study seems dated to me is that it focuses on the academic library’s traditional role as collector, organizer and gateway provider,” Bell observed. “I would argue this report needs to add a new dimension for faculty to consider: the academic library’s role as learning center and instruction partner.” That prompted a response from the report’s authors, Roger Schonfeld and Ross Housewright, who said they would both examine the current data to address the question, as well as consider adding a question for the 2009 survey.
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| Happy OA Day!
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for Free Culture this week announced their sponsorship of the first-ever international “Open Access Day”. The event will also mark the launch of the new “Voices of Open Access Video Series,” which will feature “key members of the research community, including a teacher, librarian, researcher, student, patient advocate, and a funder,” speaking about open access.
SPARC officials said “Open Access Day” was inspired by the National Day of Action on February 15, 2007, led by Students for Free Culture. SPARC officials said they are encouraging librarians and student organizers in North American to host meetings around a broadcast set for 7:00 PM (EST) and 7:00 PM (PST) that will feature appearances from Sir Richard Roberts, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1993, one of 26 Nobel Prize-winners to sign the Open Letter to U.S. Congress in support of taxpayer access to publicly funded research, and Philip E. Bourne, founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology. Additional international events will be announced shortly.
To see a list of participating campuses, and to sign up, visit the Open Access Day Web site.
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| Amazon Acquires Shelfari; Project Muse launches New Interface; Swets Sponsors Charleston Conference Scholarship…
Earlier this month Amazon announced that it would purchase AbeBooks, the used and rare book seller, and in doing so would acquire that company’s 40 percent minority stake in social cataloging site LibraryThing. Now, for its second acquisition in August, the online retailer said it will acquire LibraryThing’s direct competitor Shelfari for an undisclosed amount. The move is not out of the blue, as Amazon already invested $1 million in February 2007.
Both Shelfari and LibraryThing allow users to catalog their personal book collections and participate in a social network built around the connections linking books and users, though LibraryThing has somewhat more of a foothold in the library world. The immediate ramifications of the new relationship between the two social book-sharing sites are still unclear, but Shelfari’s access to and potential integration with Amazon’s data services pose distinct challenges to its competitors. As LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding wrote in a post to the “Talk” section of the LibraryThing site, “once the Amazon/Shelfari deal goes through, we are competing against Amazon.”
And what a heated competition that may prove to be: in its coverage of the deal, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reminds us that LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding recently called Shelfari a “bad actor” for engaging in what he called “astroturfing,” or systematically planting positive comments on blogs…
Swets North America this week announced a Charleston Conference Scholarship, a $1000 award for a working librarian or paraprofessional to attend the XXVIII Annual Charleston Conference November 5-8, in Charleston, SC.
To apply for the scholarship, candidates must submit an essay of no more than 1000 words detailing “out of the box thinking” they have used to “solve an electronic resource issue.” Candidates must currently work as a librarian or paraprofessional, and should also include a brief vita. Entries are due September 15, and can be submitted here. All entries will be reviewed by a committee comprised of: Katina Strauch, Head of Collection Development, College of Charleston, and conference founder; Chuck Hamaker, Associate University Librarian for Collections & Technical Services, University of North Carolina - Wilmington; and Christine Stamison, Senior Customer Relations Manager, Swets…
Pioneering e-book provider—or should we say, e-content service and technology provider ebrary, announced this week it has brought an additional 14 publishers into its partner program. That raises the total to more than 300 scholarly, STM, trade, and reference publishers, who together now offer more than 170,000 ebooks and other materials. A list of ebrary’s latest publishing partners is here...
Project MUSE announced this week that it has launched a new interface, featuring several new tools and resources for scholars, librarians, and publishers. Features include the ability to email a link, find more articles from the same author—and, of course, in the socially networked age, share articles. During the fall and winter, users will begin to see reference linking and a “Related Articles” list, and Project MUSE officials say the web site will continue to evolve—and comments and questions are welcome...
RFID vendor Bibliotheca said its latest products now have “a hybrid detection method” that reads both Electromagnetic (EM) and radio frequency identification (RFID) tag information, ideal for libraries just beginning or still considering the transition to an RFID-tagged collection. With the ability to read both the new and the old formats, the hybrid readers allow circulation to continue without major disruption during the changeover phase. The recent announcement from Bibliotheca includes two EM/RFID hybrid products: BiblioGate and Biblio SelfCheck.
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| Submissions Sought for Library Journal’s Annual Architectural Issue
If you have an academic building project completed between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2008, make sure it is included in Library Journal’s annual December Architectural Issue. Projects can be submitted online or on paper. Academic project forms can be submitted or downloaded at www.libraryjournal.com/AcademicArch2008. The deadline is October 14, 2008. If you need more information, email Bette-Lee Fox at bl.fox@reedbusiness.com or call 646-746-6802.
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Best Sellers in Literature, January, 2008–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13-digit ISBNs in brackets)
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Shakespeare’s Wife
Greer, Germaine
HarperCollins
2007. ISBN 0061537152 [9780061537158]. $26.95
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Ezra Pound: Poet: A Portrait of the Man and His Work; I: The Young Genius, 1885-1920
Moody, Anthony David
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 019921557x [9780199215577]. $47.95
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Unaccustomed Earth
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Alfred A Knopf
2008. ISBN 0307265730 [9780307265739]. $25.00
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Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World
Perkowitz, S.
Columbia University Press
2007. ISBN 0231142803 [9780231142809]. $24.95
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Diary of a Bad Year
Coetzee, J.M.
Viking
2007. ISBN 0670018759 [9780670018758]. $24.95
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Melville: The Making of the Poet
Parker, Hershel
Northwestern University
2008. ISBN 0810124645 [9780810124646]. $32.95
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Several Lives of Joseph Conrad
Stape, J.H.
Pantheon
2007. ISBN 1400044499 [9781400044498]. $30.00
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Power To Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law, 1509-1625
Cormack, Bradin
University Of Chicago Press
2007. ISBN 0226116247 [9780226116242]. $35.00
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People of the Book: A Novel
Brooks, Geraldine
Viking
2008. ISBN 067001821x [9780670018215]. $25.95
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Looking for Hamlet
Hunt, Marvin W.
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 140397036x [9781403970367]. $27.95
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Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
Hajdu, David
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2008. ISBN 0374187673 [9780374187675]. $26.00
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D.W. Griffith’s the Birth of a Nation: A History of “The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time”
Stokes, Melvyn
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 019533678x [9780195336788]. $99.00
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Alfred Kazin: A Biography
Cook, Richard M.
Yale University Press
2007. ISBN 0300115059 [9780300115055]. $35.00
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Deportees and Other Stories
Doyle, Roddy
Viking
2008. ISBN 0670018457 [9780670018451]. $24.95
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Father’s Law
Wright, Richard
HarperPerennial
2008. ISBN 006134916x [9780061349164]. $14.95
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David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre
Nadel, Ira Bruce
Palgrave Macmillan
2008. ISBN 0312293445 [9780312293444]. $26.95
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Writer's People: Ways of Looking And Feeling: An Essay in Five Parts
Naipaul, V.S.
Alfred A Knopf
2008. ISBN 0375407383 [9780375407383]. $24.95
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Armageddon in Retrospect and Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace
Vonnegut, Kurt
Putnam
2008. ISBN 0399155082 [9780399155086]. $24.95
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Enchantress of Florence: A Novel
Rushdie, Salman
Random House
2008. ISBN 0375504338 [9780375504334]. $26.00
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Isherwood on Writing
Isherwood, Christopher
James J. Berg, Editor
University of Minnesota Press
2007. ISBN 0816646937 [9780816646937]. $25.95
Library Journal Academic Newswire
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