2011 State Of America's Libraries Report

2011 State of America's Libraries Now Available!

The Great Recession may have come to an end, but there's no end to libraries' key role in helping hard-pressed Americans find employment or launch a bootstraps venture. These and other key trends in the library community are detailed in this report on the State of America's Libraries, 2011. This report is provided free of charge from the American Library Association's Public Information Office in the easy-to-use Zmag web browser format or as a PDF for offline reading.

http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/archives/issue/state-americas-libraries-2011

Library Resource Guide Spending Report

In late 2010, the Library Resource Guide (LRG) conducted a comprehensive survey on library spending. The forty-page final report, prepared by Information Today's Unisphere Research group is now available for complimentary download. Please take a moment to register to receive the report. We believe you will find it surprising in some ways, challenging in others, but highly informative and an excellent reference tool providing information on library spending trends overall, as well as reported by library type (public, academic, government and special libraries). Our intention is to provide a larger context for evaluating and considering your own budget priorities. Future reports to be released over the next several months will look more deeply at library spending trends within each sector by size of budget and by the size of the community served (population, enrollment, or size of organization). We will be in touch as those reports become available.
Library Resource Guide, 2011, LRG Spending Reports

Report: College Student Preparation and Training

Report examines the urgent need to prepare students for post-secondary degrees and professional training, lessons from Northern and Central Europe, and models of school reform to provide career and technical education, including expanded roles for employers.
Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf

2011 Horizons Report

The 2011 Horizons Report is out. Each year, the Horizon Report introduces six emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter mainstream use within the next five years. It focuses on technology trends in higher education, but is valuable reading for librarians in all types of institutions. Technology trends to watch: Electronic books, mobiles: Time-to-Adoption: <1>Time-to-Adoption: 4-5 years

New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE, 2011, Horizons Report
http://www.slideshare.net/dreig/2011-horizonreport

Report: States have unused student learning data

Overall, states have made unprecedented progress in collecting longitudinal student data. But they don't actually use it to improve student learning. The analysis also found that the majority of states don't link data across education systems or make it available to stakeholders. Because they don't make it available to stakeholders, they can't make decisions based on the data to help improve student outcomes.

Data for Action, 2010, Do States Use Data to Improve Student Learning?