Strategy for Libraries, Scholars, and Society

In the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2009, the researchers examined faculty attitudes and reported practices in three broad areas, finding that:

-       Basic scholarly information use practices have shifted rapidly in recent years, and as a result the academic library is increasingly being disintermediated from the discovery process, risking irrelevance in one of its core functional areas.

-       Faculty members growing comfort relying exclusively on digital versions of scholarly materials opens new opportunities for libraries, new business models for publishers, and new challenges for preservation.

-       Despite several years of sustained efforts by publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, faculty members, and others to reform various aspects of the scholarly communications system, a fundamentally conservative set of faculty attitudes continues to impede systematic change.

In planning for the future, attention to the needs, attitudes, and behaviors of faculty is of paramount importance, but these can only be one input into strategic planning processes.

Schonfeld, R. C., & Housewright, R. (2010). Faculty survey 2009: Key strategic insights for libraries, publishers, and societies. New York, NY: Ithaka. http://www.sr.ithaka.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Faculty_Study_2009.pdf