 Hey, everyone, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I know some people are still trickling in. But while that happens, I would just want to introduce myself. I am Iwana Holber, and I'm a researcher with Ithaca SNR. And today I'm going to be talking to you about the latest cycle of our US National Library Survey. So since 2010, Ithaca SNR has been fielding a National Library Survey on a tri-annual basis in an effort to track how library priorities have really changed over time. As you may recall, in 2020, we ran a special cycle of the survey to account for the extraordinary times. However, by October 2022, when we fielded this survey, the extraordinary really became ordinary. We've actually subtitled the report, which just came out last week, Navigating the New Normal, in recognition that many of the challenges library leaders faced in 2020 as they responded to the pandemic and calls for racial reckoning are ongoing and continue to have an impact on strategy and operations. With that said, I'm happy to report that the survey had a response rate of 42%, which, if you're in the business of surveys, that's pretty amazing. And I do want to mention some stats on the sample itself. So it does skew towards doctoral institution, towards private institutions. Most of our respondents were female, over 45 years old and white. And they come from institutions where librarians have faculty status and are not unionized. And most directors have been in their current position for five or fewer years and hold an MLS degree. So to go over the key findings, we structure the presentation to cover highlights of our findings, having to do a strategic vision, spending, personnel management, and finally, collections, specifically focused on leadership perspectives on the publishing ecosystem. But before we dive into the findings, I do want to take a moment and thank Elsevier and JSTOR, our sponsors for this cycle of the survey. And now let's dive right in and talk some data. So one of the first key findings here has to do with the value proposition of the library. So in general, the findings are consistent with previous cycles for which we have historical data. The majority of library directors spend their time on administrative work, such as budgeting, staffing, and talent management related issues with doctoral university library directors being less likely than their counterparts at baccalaureate and master's institutions to spend their time on direct service provision, professional development, or external fundraising. However, one of the standout takeaways has to do with the value proposition of the library, which remains a challenge for deans and directors. What I mean by this is that while over 72% of library deans and directors report high levels of confidence in their own ability to articulate the library's value proposition in a way that aligns with the goals of the institution, that percentage drops to 51% when we talk about confidence in other senior administrators believing in this alignment. We also found that half of library leaders are confident that they are considered to be members of their institution's senior academic leadership, and this percentage has really hovered around 50% since the 2016 cycle. And here we have the breakdown by Carnegie class for these statements, where we found that doctoral institution directors are significantly more likely to report a higher degree of confidence on all three items. Now, keeping with the strategic vision theme, we asked directors to rate their agreement with a different set of strategy-related issues, and we found that less than a fifth of library directors in our sample believe that they have a clear vision for future-proofing that takes into account technological and sociopolitical trends, and only 17% have a clear vision for redressing the influence of diss or misinformation among their community members. This last finding is pretty striking, given most directors rank information literacy, among others, as a high priority function for the library, and here I'm talking like 98% virtually everyone in the sample. In terms of budgeting, we found that priorities really continue to shift from collections to services with a third of library deans and directors projecting an overall decrease in expenditures directed towards general collections, particularly print resources, and nearly a fifth on rare, special, and other distinctive collections. While this shift holds across institution type, directors from master's institutions are more likely to anticipate degree spending across the board. Specifically, while 24% each of library directors from doctoral and baccalaureate institutions reported considering a decreased collections budget, this percentage rises to 40% when we talk about master's institutions. In terms of where directors project an increase, 34% forecast increasing spending on services to support research, as well as teaching and learning, and roughly a third anticipate spending more on research data management services over the next five years. Now, since 2010, we've tracked the top three areas to which library deans and directors would allocate a 10% budget increase, and for the first time this cycle, we flip the question and ask respondents to indicate the top three areas where, if needed, they would implement budget cuts if they were to receive a 10% budget reduction. Now, I do wanna mention when we fielded the survey, this was question 17 in the survey, and it was the single source of most of my anxiety while watching this in the field, because without fail, almost every director stopped on this question for multiple days, and I just sat there hoping they would come back, and finish the survey. So lesson learned, it's gonna be the last question the next cycle. But really, given that the lack of financial resources is the biggest constraint library directors report, and I'm here talking about 80% of library directors, these two questions really operate as strategic prioritization questions, providing insight into which areas directors define as highest and lowest priority. So library directors are really prioritizing personnel over collections. They would direct funds towards staffing needs in the form of newer redefined employee positions, and employee salary increases, followed by online or digital journals and databases. Interestingly, online or digital journals and databases are also the third rated items where directors would implement a 10% budget cut if need be. Print resources emerges the lowest priority items, so 54% of directors would cut the budget for print monographs, 45% would cut print journal subscriptions, and 16% spend less on print preservation and collections management. When we stratified the analysis by Carnegie class and conducted significance testing, we found that doctoral institution directors are significantly more likely than others to allocate a 10% budget increase to new employee or redefined positions, employee salary increases, as well as technology systems and infrastructure, but significantly less likely than the others to allocate increases towards streaming media, online or digital journals and databases and e-books. As for the 10% budget cut, directors at doctoral universities are significantly more likely than others to cut their print journals budget, as well as their budget for facilities and renovations. As I hinted at a couple of slides ago, services to support research and teaching and learning are growing priorities, and doctoral institutions in particular are interested in building and expanding research data management services. This cycle, we introduced items that probe library director's opinions of the role libraries should play in the research data management life cycle. And overall, less than half of library directors find it important that their library provide any given research and data management services. However, the analysis by Carnegie class shows a stark divide in ratings by institution type. Specifically, directors at doctoral institutions are statistically significantly more likely than those at master's or baccalaureate institutions to rate these services as more important. Now, against the backdrop of the great resignation or reshuffle, the number one concern that we heard about when revising the survey instrument this cycle had to do with issues around talent management, retention and recruitment. And sure enough, we found that a quarter of more of library directors anticipate that within five years they will need to increase staffing for student success, engagement and outreach, digital preservation and archiving, and instructional design and information literacy. On the other hand, directors anticipate reducing staffing for access services, technical services, metadata and cataloging and reference services. Doctoral institutions are the ones driving the trends in staff additions, as nearly half of them anticipate adding positions or increasing staffing for research data management services, student success engagement and outreach, as well as specialized faculty research support and digital preservation archiving. This cycle, based on the feedback that we received while revising the instrument, we also introduced two new questions designed to take a closer look at personnel issues. So the first ask directors to indicate in which areas or for which skills they're currently struggling if at all to recruit or retain talent. And as we can see, library directors are primarily struggling to recruit staff in technology and programming, followed by instruction, instructional design and faculty development, as well as cataloging and metadata, archives and special collections, student success, engagement and outreach. As for talent recruitment, directors are struggling to hire staff with key skills in technology and programming, DIA and cataloging and metadata. We subsequently ask directors to indicate whether the library is considering outsourcing or whether it is actively outsourcing some skills outside of the library. And notably 10% of all directors indicated they are considering outsourcing technology and programming skills, and 12% are actively doing so, while 17% are considering outsourcing, cataloging and metadata skills, and 20% are actively outsourcing already. When looking at the breakdown by Carnegie class, we found the baccalaureate institutions are more likely to be actively outsourcing, while doctoral institutions are more likely to be considering outsourcing these skills. And now the final section that I want to cover has to do with the publishing ecosystem, where we've expanded our coverage by including some new questions, particularly focused on open access. So when looking at the stratified responses by Carnegie class, we found no statistically significant differences by institution type, and this is the only section and only questions within our survey where that is true. While half of library directors agree that funding a diverse portfolio of open initiatives is important for moving into the future of OA, a little over a quarter believe that transformative agreements are a great mechanism for this. In fact, 15% of doctoral university directors strongly disagree or disagree that transformative agreements are such a great mechanism for moving into an open access future, compared to directors from baccalaureate or master's institutions, which are at four and 6% respectively. Finally, a third of directors, specifically 32%, strongly disagree or disagree that libraries and publishers are allies when it comes to open access developments. We also ask directors to forecast the long-term impact open access will have on what their institution pays for scholarly communication. And 41% of library directors predict an increased cost and 33% project no change and 26% predict a decreased cost. More interestingly though, the majority of doctoral university directors believe that open access will result in a slight or substantial increase in cost for their institution, compared to a third of directors from baccalaureate and master's institutions. Now, I do wanna mention some other key findings that are detailed in our report, which just came out last Thursday, and you can scan that barcode and it should take you straight to the report. I'm very proud of creating that QR code. But we did find that student academic success remains a top priority across institution types. So deans and directors see the library contributing most strongly to increasing student learning and helping students develop a sense of community rather than to other metrics such as addressing student basic needs or improving post-graduation outcomes. We also found that information literacy may not have kept up with today's needs. And as I mentioned, while information literacy instruction is a core priority, less than half of respondents are confident that their library has a well-articulated strategy for combating misinformation or disinformation. And then confidence in library and institutional diversity, equity, inclusion and access initiatives is waning. While directors indicated that these strategies are a high priority for them, only a quarter are confident that their libraries have well-developed diversity, equity, inclusion and access strategies, which is down from over a third in fall 2020 when we last asked this question. Now, what's next for us? Based on some of the findings detailed here today as well as in the report, we've developed several future research projects. So the first one has to do with campus spending patterns. So the rationale here really is the publishers have diversified their portfolios and as a result are selling into different areas of the campus beyond the library. And to this end, Ithaca SNR has developed this cohort project to facilitate collaboration between libraries with understanding their university's total spend with the top 20 or 75 publishers in the field. This year, we also launched a project to help 28 universities develop campus-wide approaches to research data support services, key project components here include developing a national inventory of existing services to provide benchmarking data for individual institutions, assessing the alignment of offerings with researchers' needs and building a one-stop shop for data services as well as seeking to building consensus around coherent centralized approaches to data support services. The third one has to do with assessing inclusion and belonging. So this fall we're also planning on launching a project focus on assessing inclusion and belonging in academic libraries focused on town management, collections, services and outreach. We are also looking into developing an all-librarian survey to complement this library deans and directors survey similar to Asensis because we understand that library directors may have a different perspective on the challenges and opportunities within their sector than the librarians and staff who work in academic libraries in different capacities. So we're exploring ways to field that. And later this fall we are also working on launching a generative AI project which will assess the immediate and emerging AI applications most likely to impact teaching, learning and research activities and explore the needs of institutions, instructors and scholars as they navigate this environment. So if you have any questions about any of those initiatives come feel free to find me. It's my first time at CNI so please introduce yourselves and I'm happy to talk more about any of those projects. And with that I'll take questions and thank you. Hey, thanks for sharing. I'm Catherine with ARL and I think the previous session on accessibility is top of mind because I noticed that accessibility or access actually I'm not sure which but was included in like DEIA, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. I was wondering if you thought about running the survey with maybe accessibility as a separate question. So thinking about accessibility for people with print disabilities for instance rather than sort of chunking it with DEIA initiatives particularly given the finding that you highlighted. And so I guess the question is have you thought of running the survey that way and can you speculate about what results might look like if you did so? Thanks. Yeah, so in the report we actually included seven or so new statements that specifically have to do with how much library deans and directors prioritize specific DEIA initiatives. And one of those statements specifically has to do with ensuring the accessibility of their physical and digital resources within that library to patrons and staff. So it's not as detailed right or it's not broken down into multiple categories but that is a way that we've made sure to sort of tease this out specifically. And in terms of what I speculate the differences would be if we did sort of break it down further I think an interesting question has to do with the accessibility of a physical space which is sometimes mandated outside of the library and sort of a facilities issues as opposed to the accessibility of collections and digital resources and resources within the library itself. So I think that's definitely something that in future cycles we need to tease out more because there is a difference between what they can do with the physical building as opposed to what is in the library itself. Hi, I'm Doug Wade, University of Kentucky. I thought I was interested in the challenges around talent management. I didn't see anything about business services and business operations. For me and my institution, that's the biggest challenge. Parts for university are cannibalizing other parts of the university. At the same time we're seeing increased requirements really for accountability and audit there. And so I didn't know whether that didn't show up on the slide or if you hadn't looked at that because it looked very library specific which makes sense but that's the part I struggle with the most. Almost 100% turnover in our operations over a two year period and it just keeps on going. Yeah, we didn't ask specifically about business per se but we do have questions related to management and sort of HR and whether they're outsourcing or not fundraising and sort of financial outreach. But we don't have specifically sort of business as a category of its own so I can't speak to that but that is a great suggestion, thank you. Well, if I don't see any more questions, so. Oh, hello. Thank you. Karim Bugida, Stony Brook University. These are more personal questions. Did you find something surprising in those results or can you share it or nothing in particular? I think for me the most surprising finding had to do with the difference between responses on information literacy as a top priority for undergrad instruction particularly but then the lack of confidence in having a well-developed strategy to combat mis or disinformation and I think that may be just a question for me as a methodologist to sort of think about if I'm actually measuring what I'm trying to measure correctly if maybe well-developed strategy is sort of a very high standard or is intimidating to respondents or if the way we have a phrase combating misinformation or disinformation among community members if directors and deans are not talking about students anymore but they're talking about maybe faculty, maybe staff, maybe their actual local community and that might be we're sort of comparing oranges to apples there. Thank you, that's a great question. Eric Mitchell, UC San Diego, there we go, Eric Mitchell. Your last answer was really interesting because I wasn't gonna ask about that but it's curious to think about whether or not misinformation is not well-defined enough to be kind of fully aligned with information literacy and I don't remember how I answered that question or if I was somebody who paused for 10 days at the budget question, it didn't come back but we both have a strategy and I feel like it's not well-articulated at San Diego so I think that'd be interesting to take in further. So the question I was gonna ask was whether or not there's any connections you're seeing between the library director survey and the survey I think ran I guess just a year or two years ago now that kind of looked across the campus and views of the academic library. There may not be anything there but I don't know if you have any kind of observations of trends that you saw kind of going together or cases where directors were going in the opposite direction of kind of where the campuses were going? No and I know in the past we've had questions about sort of library deans and directors' perception of how they are perceived on campus and responses tend to vary there each year, sample to sample, there's a lot of variance within the answers but I think the interesting question to me is the one about future proofing and the one about the value proposition of the library and sort of asking directors if they feel confident that they have those, if they feel confident that they can articulate that in a way that then translates to others on campus and I think that 20% gap that we highlighted today and in the report I think that's really interesting to me in terms of where alignment might become an issue on campus. Thank you. Yeah, well with that, thank you so much and I'll see you at the reception.