A New Report From OCLC Research and ITHAKA S+R: “University Futures, Library Futures: Aligning Library Strategies with Institutional Directions”
From OCLC Research:
University Futures, Library Futures: Aligning library strategies with institutional directions establishes a new framework for understanding the fit between emerging library service paradigms and university types.
Supported in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, project leads Constance Malpas, Lorcan Dempsey, and Rona Stein from OCLC Research and Roger Schonfeld and Deanna Marcum of Ithaka S+R, examined the impact of increased institutional differentiation in universities on the organization of academic libraries and the services they provide.
As libraries move away from a collections model in which libraries measure their success by how large their collections are, this report puts a framework around library services, explores emerging patterns in different institutional settings, and gauges the importance of these services areas—now and for the future—according to surveyed library directors.
The work has three main components:
- a working model of US higher education institutions that is characterized by educational activity (Research, Liberal Education, Career-directed) and mode of provision (traditional-residential and new-traditional-flexible)
- a library services framework that covers nine key areas
- comparison of the above two to test the hypothesis that the services portfolio of libraries map onto the institutional priorities of their host university
Direct to Full Text Report
122 pages; PDF.
Filed under: Academic Libraries, Libraries, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.