Just Released: Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies
A lot to digest here. It's almost a sure thing that library discussion groups, Facebook pages, etc. will be buzzing after people have time to read and reflect on the entire report (posted below).
After reading The Chronicle of Higher Education summary we found that the sentences about institutional repositories interesting.
Less than a third of the faculty surveyed have placed materials in an institutional repository even though interest was expressed in using one. Where's the disconnect? They're interested in doing it but don't? Why? Lack of understanding of concept? Don't have time? Not worth it? Literally, don't know how to do it? The list could go on and on.
Also, "The research process is no longer likely to begin with a face-to-face consultation with a librarian." We're guessing that this means a consultation with a librarian in a library. Like some libraries are already doing, what about making "office calls" to get to know and understand the faculty members information needs since they're not going to be coming in to the physical library. At the same time, if and when they do require assistance, they have a person that they've already met. All of this is easier said than done, especially on a large campus and then toss in marketing. However, a few positive sessions with key faculty members will likely get people talking and word of mouth buzzing.
This is the fourth in a series of reports from Ithaka S+R.
This web page contains methodology details; links to the complete report by chapter; upcoming and past presentations about faculty attitudes and repackaging the library; webinar info.
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.
From Chapter Two:
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.
From Chapter Three:
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.
A report on the findings, "Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies" gives detailed responses from 3,025 scholars at institutions across the country. It focuses on three areas: how faculty members use and perceive their campus libraries; how they are handling the print-to-digital shift in scholarly work; and how much they have or have not changed their professional habits in an increasingly electronic environment...The new report is the latest installment that presents findings from a survey Ithaka has conducted every three years for the past decade.
The first section, "Discovery and the Evolving Role of the Library," confirms what many librarians already know: Faculty members do not use the library as a gateway to information nearly as much as they used to.
"The research process is no longer likely to begin with a face-to-face consultation with a librarian, a visit to the library's special-collections service points, or a search of the online library catalog," the report notes. Humanists are still more likely than scientists to start their research in the library itself or via its online catalog—30 percent versus 10 percent—but even among humanists, there is a distinct trend "away from library-specific starting points" and toward network-level discovery via electronic resources, such as Google Scholar or a database of academic journals. The days of the library as the so-called laboratory of the humanities may be numbered.
Other Topics in this COHE Summary
Digital Journals
The embrace of digital journals has become so widespread that print editions of current issues "are rapidly becoming a thing of the past" for many scholars, the survey found. Sixty percent of humanists and more than 80 percent of scientists said they would be fine with having their libraries provide only electronic copies of the latest issues of journals.
Slightly more than 10 percent said that they considered e-books "very important" now in their research and teaching. Interestingly, though, more than 30 percent of respondents think that e-books will be important in their professional lives in five years.
Scholarly Communications
The findings in the third section of the report, "Scholarly Communications," are most likely to dismay open-access advocates and those who seek to overhaul the tenure-and-promotion regime. When deciding where to publish, the scholars surveyed still rated recognition by their peers over open access. They expressed interest in putting their work in institutional repositories, but less than a third have actually done so.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
