Study Explore @ A Larger Role for Libraries

A Larger Role for Libraries

Study explores faculty members' views on scholarly communication, the use of information and the state of academic libraries and their concerns about students' research skills.

Faculty members are showing increasing interest in supporting students and improving their learning outcomes, and say the library can play an important role in that work, a new study found.

Ithaka S+R’s latest national faculty survey, released this morning, shows two storylines in higher education intersecting. The results suggest the pressure on colleges to improve retention and completion rates and prepare students for life after college appears to be influencing faculty members, who are more concerned than ever that undergraduates don’t know how to locate and evaluate scholarly information.

At the same time, many faculty members view university libraries -- which are engaged in a process of reinventing themselves and rethinking their services -- as an increasingly important source not only of undergraduate support but also as an archive, a buyer, a gateway to research and more.

“We have a number of findings that show faculty members are paying more attention to students' skills and that they’re looking at the library as a partner,” said Roger C. Schonfeld, director of Ithaka S+R's libraries and scholarly communication program, who co-authored the report. “It suggests real opportunities for universities that wouldn’t necessarily be possible if it was just an administrative initiative rather than a set of perception changes.”

Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit consulting and research company, has conducted the survey -- a wide-ranging exploration of how faculty members feel about information usage and scholarly communication -- every three years since 2000. This year’s edition includes responses from 9,203 faculty members representing all arts and sciences and most professional fields at four-year colleges and universities in the U.S., collected last fall.

In an interview, Schonfeld said faculty members’ thoughts on their own students’ research skills are one of the most interesting developments since the 2012 survey. More than half of respondents (54 percent) described those skills as poor, up from 47 percent in 2012. Faculty members in the humanities were particularly critical, with about six in 10 respondents saying their students struggle.

Report Link | http://www.sr.ithaka.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/SR_Report_US_Faculty_Survey_2015040416.pdf

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Manager @ Library

Khaitan & Co

Upcoming Event | National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) during April 22-23, 2016.

Note | If anybody use these post for forwarding in any social media coverage or covering in the Newsletter please give due credit to those who are taking efforts for the same.