The Impacts of COVID-19 on Academic Library Budgets: Fall 2020
The pandemic has wrought profound disruption on the academic sector. Today, we share findings from a major research project about the budget situation in US academic libraries.
Guest Post — Shared Print Down the Rabbit Hole
Libraries’ ability to steward print collections in the future is being compromised by how we manage them now. How can we evolve our shared print strategy to align with the core values of libraries, and to increase the value proposition of print collections. Part 1 of 2.
What Library Directors Are Thinking: An Ithaka S+R Survey Report
Ithaka S+R has just published the latest in its ongoing series of triennial library director surveys, and its findings are interesting and, in some ways, sobering.
Less Than Meets the Eye: Print Book Use Is Falling Faster in Research Libraries
Use of printed books in large North American research libraries is falling even faster than we think.
The Bookstore in the Library
PDA programs set up a kind of bookstore within library OPACs. It is possible to expand the range of these programs to enable the purchase of books by individuals on their own account–a new service for patrons and an income stream for libraries and publishers alike.
Stick to Your Ribs: The Library With No Books In It
Editor’s Note: This post is being republished to coincide with the launch of the Digital Public Library.
Another Perspective on Library-Press "Partnerships"
A response to Joe Esposito’s post last week about partnerships between libraries and university presses.
How Wrong Is Greta Van Susteren about Libraries?
Is Greta Van Susteren right in taking universities to task for building “huge libraries” and in characterizing them as “vanity projects” that have been obviated by the growing online availability of books and other scholarly resources? Obviously not — that’s the position of an ignorant philistine. Except…
Library-Institution Misalignment: One Real-World Example
There seems to be a significant disagreement between academic libraries and their own host institutions with regard to an important rule change proposed by the Department of Education. That disagreement has implications that go way beyond the rule itself.
The Library With No Books In It
A surprising collection found at the Schroedinger Archive includes a number of works of short fiction that take scholarly communications as their subject. In it, we find a tale with many surprising reversals — “The Library With No Books In It.”
PDA and Inter-library Loan
Patron-driven acquisitions programs may supplant inter-library loans for ebooks, which in turn could get more publishers to support both PDA and ILL.
Data-mining the Library
Libraries generate a great deal of information about their own processes, including circulation records. Making that information available to others could be the basis for a consortium to share and market such library data.
Libraries Receive Shrinking Share of University Expenditures
Over the past three decades, the research library has been receiving a smaller proportion of the university budget. Does this trend reflect the failure of library administrators and the declining relevance of libraries? Or does it tell the story of self-control and growing efficiency against a backdrop of spiraling higher education costs?
Retirement Wave To Hit Academic Librarianship
Like other greying professions, demographic data for ARL libraries warn us of a breaking wave of retirements but may paint an unrealistic picture of what the beach will look like after the surf has settled.
Diverting Leakage to the Library Subscription Channel
Springer Nature is leading in the effort to preserve library subscriptions by syndicating its content and, in doing so, would establish ResearchGate as perhaps the foremost service for the distribution of scholarly content. Analysis by @lisalibrarian and @rschon.