Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Ithaka Faculty Survey Key Insights and Opportunities

Anonymous Tuesday, September 22, 2015 , 1 comment :
Earlier this year, University of Alberta Libraries [UAL] sought feedback from faculty about the impact of digital information technologies on their research and teaching via the Ithaka Faculty Survey. In addition to the reports and data already posted here, Ithaka recently provided the Libraries with an analytical narrative of the results of the survey, that also provides some comparisons against aggregated findings of all participating CARL [Canadian Association of Research Libraries] institutions.

A key goal of the survey is to provide evidence-based strategic insights into how faculty members perceive the role of the Libraries and identify areas of opportunity for innovation. The results from the survey revealed the following strategically relevant key insights and opportunities.

Key Insights

  • In general, a substantial share of faculty value the library's role in serving as a gateway for the discovery of scholarly content
  • Across all disciplines, faculty view the library's role as a purchaser of collections as critical to their ability to conduct research
  • Arts and humanities faculty highly value and recognize the library’s role in providing access to needed research materials and scholarly content, and in the provision of research and teaching-related support for students in developing research and information literacy skills
  • Faculty in the medical/veterinary/health science and science disciplines are much more likely to prefer only electronic versions of scholarly resources including monographs and journal articles, when compared with their colleagues in the arts, humanities, and social sciences
  • In general, respondents value the library’s role in providing access to subscription-based online repositories of research data, indicating that faculty members may value specialized research content and collections in addition to access to traditional literature

Strategic Opportunities

  • To focus on enhancing engagement among faculty members in science disciplines regarding library-provided research and instructional support services
  • To enhance strategic communications or targeted outreach to faculty members in medical/veterinary/health science and arts and humanities disciplines specifically regarding how the Libraries can support faculty in organizing, managing, and preserving
  • To continue to develop services surrounding the curation of data

For Further Information





1 comment :

  1. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2015 at 3:06 PM

    In this week's New York Times: "E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead."

    Slowing sales numbers provide yet more evidence that U of A Libraries may have passed its digital policy for monograph acquisitions prematurely. The article states, "the digital apocalypse never arrived, or at least not on schedule. While analysts once predicted that e-books would overtake print by 2015, digital sales have instead slowed sharply." This news will come as no surprise to many library users who have been experiencing difficulties when attempting to conduct thorough research using inefficient e-book digital platforms currently available.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/media/the-plot-twist-e-book-sales-slip-and-print-is-far-from-dead.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

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