Survey Highlights Digitization’s Impact on Campus Libraries

By David Raths  05/22/17

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/22/survey-highlights-digitizations-impact-on-campus-libraries.aspx

nonprofit Ithaka S+R. The study, Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2016, highlighted a number of challenges facing library directors in an era of increased digitization. Future Trends Forum video chat May 19 hosted by Bryan Alexander.

Alexander zeroed in on the finding that library directors feel increasingly less valued by supervisors such as chief academic officers.

Not surprisingly, the survey illustrates a broad shift toward electronic resources, Wolff-Eisenberg noted, with an increasing number of libraries developing policies for de-accessioning print materials that are also available digitally.

library directors are increasingly recognizing that discovery does not always happen in the library. Compared to the 2013 survey results, fewer library directors believe that it is important that the library is seen by its users as the first place that they go to discover content, and fewer believe that the library is always the best place for researchers at their institution to start their research.

There is also a substantial gap between how faculty members and library directors perceive the library’s contribution in supporting student learning. Both tend to agree that students have poor research skills, Wolff-Eisenberg noted. The faculty members see it as more of a problem, but they are less likely than library directors to see librarians contributing to student learning by helping them to develop research skills

The positions for which respondents anticipate the most growth in the next five years are related to instructional design (my note: this is IMS), information literacy and specialized faculty research support involving digital humanities, geographical information systems (GIS) and data management.

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more on digitization in academic libraries in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digitization+library