StatsCan: Estimated Financial Impact to Canadian Universities Due to COVID-19

Statistics Canada’s latest paper in their Education, Learning and Training Research Series estimates the projected financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian universities for the 2020-2021 academic year. Over the last decade, universities have increasingly relied on tuition fees as a revenue source. This growth has been estimated to come mostly from an increasing Read More…

UC’s Deal with Elsevier is a Victory for Open Access

Fantastic news from the world of scholarly publishing! After over two years of negotiations following a broken business relationship, the University of California (UC) and Elsevier have created a transformative agreement that represents a landmark victory for open access publishing. The four-year agreement goes into effect on April 1, 2021 and restores UC access to Read More…

OCLC and CARL Partner to Discover Trends in Research Libraries

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and the OCLC Research Library Partnership recently announced they will collaborate to discover the innovation trends and priorities in Canadian research libraries. Building on similar work with research libraries in UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, France, and Italy in 2017, a survey will be sent to Read More…

Working Together: Saskatchewan Libraries and other Information Providers

This discussion paper, released in 2005 and available via the Saskatchewan Libraries website. The paper discusses the benefits of the multi-type library board, and provides research on the impact of information services in Saskatchewan in terms of communities, culture and recreation, youth, health, rural life, and indigenous peoples. The paper concludes with a set of Read More…

Recent research: Transforming Roles – Canadian Academic Librarians Embedded in Faculty Research Projects

College & Research Libraries vol. 78 no. 3 314-327 March 2017 Authors: Shailoo Bedi, Director, Academic Commons and Strategic Assessment in University of Victoria Libraries Christine Walde, Grants and Awards Librarian, University of Victoria Libraries Abstract Academic librarians have always played an important role in providing research services and research-skills development to faculty in higher Read More…

University of Calgary receives Funding to Transform the Role of Libraries in Academic Research

The University of Calgary has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the university library playing “an enhanced role in faculty research by offering leading-edge technologies, collaboration spaces, and new designs in research services. The vision for this project includes developing a platform for supporting multidisciplinary research, enhancing campus-wide partnerships and a fundamental repositioning Read More…

Measuring the Value of Academic Libraries, Beyond Books

Ithaka S+R and OCLC Research are launching a research project to examine how value academic libraries, not in terms of collections, but in terms of service. The project, named “University Futures; Library Futures”, will evaluate the higher education landscape to determine how academic libraries are differentiating themselves and creating value for their institutions. As reported in a Read More…

Lib-Value: Values, Outcomes, and Return on Investment of Academic Libraries, Phase III: ROI of the Syracuse University Library

by Bruce Kingma and Kathleen McClure This study measures the return on investment (ROI) of the Syracuse University library. Faculty and students at Syracuse University were surveyed using contingent valuation methodology to measure their willingness to pay in time and money for the services of the academic library. Their travel time and use of the online library Read More…