The survey presents the opinion of 249 higher education leaders – deans, provosts, trustees, chancellors, academic and administrative department heads, distinguished professors and other leaders and administrators in research universities – about the quality of their general university and academic library information technology & related services. The 70-page report provides specific benchmarking data on their evaluations of information databases, academic library info technology assistance, 3D printing facilities, specialized library technology and group study rooms, and laptop lending by the academic library. In addition, respondents evaluate the help they get from the general university IT department as well as help in using the university course management system and in using the general college website.
Survey participants relate which technologies they would like to see their university management and their academic libraries focus on in the near future.
Data in the reports is broken out by a broad range of criteria including: age, gender, academic title, and compensation level of respondent, and university ranking, public/private status and country of origin of the respondents affiliated institution.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
-
Deans, provosts, and chancellors were the most likely among various academic and administrative title groups to consider specialized academic library information technology rooms or “commons’ important as a spending priority.
-
Respondents from Australia/New Zealand gave the highest level of support to 3D printing as an information technology spending priority among the six countries sampled.
-
Younger respondents were much more likely than older ones to rate their institutions as behind the curve on the range and quality of information technology available to faculty and staff. 41.67% of respondents under age 30 believed their universities to be disadvantaged vis-à-vis peer universities.
-
Male respondents were more likely than females to rate their experiences with university technology help lines positively; 55.24% rated their experience as good or excellent compared to just 43.06% of females.
Respondents were drawn from major research universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. A list of the institutional affiliations of the survey participants is below:
Australian National University
Barnard College
Baylor College of Medicine
Brown University
Carleton University
Carnegie Mellon University
Case Western Reserve University
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland
Curtin University
Drexel University
Emory University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Griffith University
Imperial College London
James Cook University
Lehigh University
Massey University
McGill University
Michigan State University
Monash University
Penn State College of Medicine
Penn State University
Pennsylvania State University
Princeton University
Queen Mary University of London
Rice University
Rutgers
Saint Louis University
Swinburne University of Technology
Teachers