Ithaka S+R, the strategy and research arm of Ithaka, has released the results from its fourth faculty survey in the past decade. The survey examines changes in faculty attitudes towards the academic library, information resources and the scholarly communications system as a whole.
In a published report, ‘Faculty Survey 2009: Strategic Insights for Librarians, Publishers, and Societies’, Ithaka S+R analyses responses from over 3,000 faculty members based at US four-year colleges or universities. It aims to offer a comparative look at 2009 against previous surveys from 2000, 2003 and 2006, on a variety of key questions facing information service organisations and their parent institutions.
Trends in faculty attitudes and behaviours on various issues are addressed. The issues range from the library as an information gateway and the need for preservation of scholarly material, to the faculty’s engagement with institutional and disciplinary repositories and thoughts about open access. For the first time, Ithaka S+R also looked at the role that scholarly societies play and their value to faculty.
In addition to possible areas for strategic re-thinking, the report is also projected to reveal some new opportunities on the horizon. One of the bigger questions raised is whether faculty will require tailored information solutions to meet their needs over time. According to the survey, Google and Google Scholar play increasingly important roles in faculties’ research, but specialised disciplinary sources for scholarship do as well. This is an area where the need for new services deeply knowledgeable about and able to serve particular research interests – whether provided by libraries, publishers, societies or others – may be on the rise.
The report also offers an analysis of trend data and the study of faculty by discipline.
The full report is freely available at http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009. Results will also be presented at the Coalition for Networked Information Spring Meeting in Washington D.C. on April 12, 2010.
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