 Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today. I'm Cliff Lynch. I'm the director of the Coalition for Networked Information, and I will be introducing this session. You've joined us today for one of the project briefing sessions that are part of week four of our CNI fall 2020 virtual member meeting week for to remind you is themed around emerging issues and research. emerging issues and responses to the current crisis that we are collectively attempting to navigate. This presentation qualifies on both counts, I think. And I'll say more about that moment. A couple logistical things. We are recording this session and we will make the recording publicly available shortly. So closed captioning please turn that on if it's helpful to you. There is a chat running and please feel free to use that during the presentation. There is also a Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen and you can use that to queue up questions at any point during the presentation. From both of our speakers. Diane Goldenberg Hart from CNI will moderate a Q&A session. And we'll try and address as many of those questions as we can. So with that, let me turn to the topic at hand we have with us. Jennifer Frederick and Christine Wolfeisenberg both from Ithaca SNR. Ithaca has for some years been doing very valuable systematic surveys of academic libraries and their directors and what's on their mind. They've been very gracious in using CNI as a venue to publicly release those findings over the years and I'm delighted that they are doing that again today. They've just put out this study. In fact, you may have seen the press coverage of it this morning in places like inside higher education. This is the first study like this that I know of that has taken that's been done since the pandemic started and I think it will offer us a very valuable window into the thinking of academic library leadership at this juncture in time. With that, I am going to just thank Christine and Jennifer again and turn it over to Christine to start the presentation. Wonderful. Thanks so much Cliff for the really, really warm welcome. Thanks everyone for for being here today we're really excited to share with you some of our findings and hopefully engage with many of you towards towards the end of the half hour. In 30 minutes with you I'm just going to keep it keep it pretty brief. As Cliff mentioned we, we've released a new report earlier today. Many of you maybe have have seen it, covering the perspectives of over 600 library directors on the strategies budgeting staffing issues that they're facing in light of the coven 19 pandemic. I just want to give a quick, a quick thank you to our sponsors for the project. This work really wouldn't be possible without their, their support. And I also want to thank our project advisors this is a group of just really incredible professionals and leaders in the field who have helped to guide the project at a number of really important points. And so with that very brief introduction, I'm going to jump off for a couple of minutes while Jen walks through the, the key findings and I'll be back for for Q&A. Great. Thanks Christine. So I'm going to start off by talking a little bit about the methodology of the survey and then I'll go into the key findings that we found in the 2020 survey. So as Cliff mentioned, we've been surveying academic library directors. For some time now, we started the first survey in 2010, and we have been examining the vision and strategies as well as strengths and challenges that leaders of libraries have faced over the years. And in 2019, we, we did our most recent triennial survey as part of our standard cycle. And we asked similar questions there, which really acted as a nice baseline for pre COVID-19 comparison to what we were able to do this year. And when we realized that the COVID-19 pandemic as well as movements for racial justice, we're really impacting higher education as a whole and academic library specifically we decided to do an additional survey. And we added new coverage of topics, including COVID-19 leadership and management, as well as equity diversity inclusion and anti racism strategies, and we will be releasing a second report going over the latter findings in early 2021. We sent out the survey in September, it's with our normal process of sending out the survey, and we ended up closing the survey in October, early October with a great response rate of 43%. And this response rate differed a bit by Carnegie classification. We did see that we had the highest response rates from those at doctoral universities with a 53% response rate, and the lowest at baccalaureate colleges with a 35% response rate. And because we did see a difference in response rates between those groups, we did make sure to look at all the results by Carnegie classification, and I'll note a couple of places where there were significant results there. Looking at the individual characteristics of participants, we did see that, like in the 2019 survey that our participants did reflect the library field as a whole, so most were white, most were women, and most were 45 and older. But we wanted to look specifically at institutional characteristics here because I think that will help set the stage for the presentation today. And we do see that many 58% were operating with limited library hours and or some locations closed. An additional 52% were using high flex or hybrid models of teaching and learning so they both had or they had both online and in person teaching and learning. And many had enrollment decreases. 45% had enrollment decreases of one to 10% and a few also had even higher enrollment decreases. And so now I'll turn to the key findings. I'm sure you are almost interested in. The first key finding was that the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced and accelerated trends in library investment toward digital resources and services. And we see that 80% of library directors anticipate that their library will invest more significantly in digital resources and services. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic. And we do see that this is also reflected in their library materials budget spending. So in 2020, we see that like in the past there, they spent the most on online digital journals and databases. And for the first time we see that there has been more spending on e-books than on print books. So it's just slightly more spent on e-books compared to print books. And we also added an item for streaming media here. So about 5% of the materials budget was allocated to streaming media. We do see that in the 2020-2021 academic year that spending on electronic resources is already really high. And we also see that in five years library directors continue to expect to spend more on electronic resources than on print resources. And in by 2025 library directors anticipate spending twice as much, almost twice as much on e-books than they expect to spend on print books. And we even see that they expect to spend more on streaming media than they expect to spend on print books. So it appears that the COVID pandemic has really accelerated this trend toward spending more on electronic resources and less on print resources. Our next key finding is that library leaders feel that they have been recognized for being well-positioned and prepared for the emergency pivot to support remote research teaching and learning. So we asked library directors about how much they agree with a couple of items on this topic. We asked about whether their pre-existing digital presence was sufficiently robust so that they didn't have to do much to strengthen it during the pandemic and whether their senior academic leadership, their institution's leadership recognized this. And we see that in both cases about 70% of library directors agreed with these statements. So they did believe that they were well-positioned to operate remotely and that others at other senior leadership recognized this in comparison to other campus units. And we think that this may be one of the reasons why there has been a slight reversal of the trends that we've seen in the past where we've seen that library directors over time have decreased their agreement with the items my director and I shared a similar vision for the library. And that I'm considered by academic deans and other senior administrators to be part of my institution's senior academic leadership. So these items really show that the perceived value of the library and director role. And again, this has decreased over time but we see that there's a slight increase in the 2020 survey. And we think that this may be due to that recognition that libraries were in a good position to operate remotely during the pandemic. Our next case finding is that library directors prioritize staff well-being and organizational finances in their COVID-19 decision-making. This is a bit of a complicated graph so I'll go over it a bit in more detail. We see here that, so we asked directors about how involved they were in decision-making in four areas of the library. So closing the library location, reopening, allocating funds to collections and operations, and then allocating funds to personnel. And each of these bars represent their independence or dependence in making these decisions. So either they made the decision independently, which is the top bar. The next two bars are making the decision independently but in consultation with other leaders. So either other senior academic leaders or other leaders in the library. The next two bars are, I am part of a group of people primarily either outside the library or within the library that makes the decision together. And then the bottom bar is that another individual or group makes these decisions. So we see that for closing and reopening the library. Library directors mostly made these decisions independently in consultation with other senior academic leadership. So they were still really involved in the decision-making process, even if they weren't making it completely by themselves. But we do see that there are some that did, that do not make the decision themselves. And this is especially true at baccalaureate and master's institutions. So they're more likely to have the decision made for them. For allocating funds or budget cuts to collections and operations, we see about 75% make this decision independently either in consultation with other senior academic leadership or in consultation with other library leadership. But for allocating funds or budget cuts, it's only about 50% who make those decisions independently in consultation with these groups. And we see that there's a lot of a high percentage compared to the other three decisions where library directors have another individual or group make this decision for them. And again, this is especially the case at baccalaureate colleges and master's institutions and a little bit less so at doctoral universities. And in making these decisions, they had a lot of different things to prioritize. 97% of library directors wanted to protect the health and well-being of library employees. And the second most endorsed important consideration was establishing the library as a critically important college or university service. And these two goals are somewhat in tension with each other in that protecting the health and well-being of library employees may be easier when the library is closed. But establishing the library is a critically important college or university service may be easier if the library is open and all of the full services and collections are available. So there was a lot of things that library directors had to balance in making those kinds of decisions. Our next key finding is that most libraries have experienced budget cuts in the current academic year and there is great uncertainty about longer term financial recovery. And doctoral universities and public institutions tended to be the most impacted by budget cuts. We asked library directors about their actual budget cuts in the 2020-2021 fiscal year, specifically compared to what they would have otherwise expected before the pandemic. And we do see that a bit more than half had some budget cuts of any size, but an additional 20% had not had their budget determined. And since we fielded the survey in September and October, this is really unusual because usually library directors will know their budgets in the summer. And we also saw that those whose budgets had not been determined had been modeling for higher budget cuts. So it's definitely possible that that 20% will end up in, like all of that, but 20% will end up in the budget cut category. We don't know yet know for sure if that's the case, but it seems likely that that's a possibility. And we see only 5% had a budget increase and 20% had no budget change. And looking at the only those whose budgets had been determined, we compared their modeled budget cuts to their actual budget cuts. And we see here that many of them modeled budget cuts in the 5-9% range and the 10-14% range. But when we looked at actual budget cuts, they were more likely to be in the 1-4% and 5-9% range. So they tended to model slightly higher cuts than they actually ended up with. And we did see here that at baccalaureate institutions, they were more likely to have no budget change, specifically at private baccalaureate colleges. And at doctoral universities, they were much less likely to have no budget change. But again, they were more likely to be in the 1-4% and 5-9% budget cut ranges. And when we looked at whether they anticipate the effect on the budget to be permanent or temporary, we do see that there was a lot of uncertainty on that. About 25% believes that it would be permanent. About 25% believe it would be temporary and the remaining 50% were unsure about how long the impact, the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic would be. Of course, we're still in the pandemic, so it makes sense that library directors are not quite sure about exactly how long this is going to impact their budgets. And then finally, personnel cuts have most affected those who work in physical library spaces. The library directors view these spaces as crucial to their long-term mission. And we see that 84% agree that despite the need to focus predominantly on digital services and resources in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical library space remains crucial to their library's long-term mission. So they still recognize that even though they've been working remotely, that students really appreciate the quiet space on campus and that they use the library for individual as well as group work. And there are other departments and services like a disability services office or an LGBT center that those are often in the library as well. So the physical space still remains important to the long-term mission. And in terms of personnel decisions, the most common decisions that were made at institutions were hiring freezes, salary freezes and elimination of currently vacant positions. And like with budget cuts, these were all more common at doctoral universities. And for the positions that were affected the most, those were access services, technical services, metadata and cataloging and facilities, operations and security. Many of these positions require the physical library space or are dependent on the physical library space. So it makes sense that these are the ones that were most impacted. But the ways that they were impacted were more likely to be furloughs rather than elimination of currently filled positions as well as elimination of currently vacant positions. So when possible, institutions did try to to keep the employees that they had, even if it wasn't the most positive situation. So with that, we can open the floor to questions. Thank you Jen and thank you Christine so much for excuse me that really fascinating look at what has been happening with libraries as a result of our current crises. The floor is now open for questions and I would like to invite our attendees to please type your questions in the chat box. I'm sorry in the Q&A box right now and I'm sure that Jen and Christine would be happy to address those. So while we're waiting for folks to think about your presentation and what they would like to reflect on. I have a quick question, Jen I was wondering the response rate which I think was around 40% or so. How does that compare to the response rate from previous surveys of this kind. Yeah, we got really close to the response rate we had in the 2019 survey I believe it was 46% in the 2019 survey so it was really, really close to what we usually get, which was pleasantly surprising because we weren't sure if everyone would be, you know, able to take the survey. Given all of the context that was going on and you know there's a lot that they had to think about at the time so we are really grateful to our participants for taking the time to take the survey during this busy time. Yeah that's a really surprising figure and wonderful. All right thank you so much Jen and I see actually that Clifford has a question for you go ahead Cliff. I'm curious about something and I'm not sure whether your survey was designed to detect this or not. I have heard at least anecdotally from a number of libraries that as instruction moved remote. They started getting that they started purchasing more instructional material. Historically most libraries have not gotten much involved in acquiring textbooks and related things and some of them had and suggested at least in the conversations I had that once having breached that they're probably going to be in that for the long term did you pick up any of that move to commit some of library acquisitions budgets to instructional material. I wish we had asked about that now Cliff I know I wish there was a question about, you know, collections investments in particular and whether they were more research oriented or, or teaching oriented. I think we've both heard heard some of those some similar anecdotes to the ones that you mentioned. I know that folks doing emergency digitizing of materials for for instruction but I don't know gender we have nothing is coming to to me it's one of those, one of those things that now I'm wishing in retrospect we had asked. Yeah, no I don't think we separated it by instructional material and research material. We just know that they're spending more on ebooks, which many of which could be instructional material but yeah we didn't. Yeah, we didn't look specifically at textbooks. It's a great question. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Cliff. Yeah, I was thinking about the Hathi ethos emergency access program and where that slots where people were slotting that in their budgets. But we do have a question from Clem Guthrough, who asks, were there any results from the survey that surprised you. I think it was surprising that we saw so many baccalaureate colleges that didn't have any budget cuts. And we did look at this in a couple of ways. And we think that part of it might be that because they don't have as much control over their budget. They might have not had overall budget cuts, even when they had to make cuts to personnel so we think it might not have shown up quite in the data. That's exactly how the data might not completely reflect exactly how they've seen cuts. But I think that's something that we would want to want to look at further, especially with the number of or the high percent of colleges and universities where libraries didn't even know what their budgets were. That's definitely something we want to look more into. Absolutely. I think I think Jen that was also what what surprised me but starting to piece together some possible explanations for why that is and and yeah we've heard from a number of library directors. Now at baccalaureate colleges that reported reported no budget cut but have shared that their personnel was affected drastically and so it's, it really goes back to those those findings Jen that you were sharing around who's responsible for making certain decisions and what aspects of the budget are within the library budget as opposed to affecting, affecting the library. I'll just say as far as what surprised me more more pleasantly was the 70% or so share of library directors that felt that they had been recognized for being well well positioned to pivot remotely it's something that we we hypothesized that we might find given how prepared the library was compared to other kinds of units that we can you know we could think of where there wasn't as much digital infrastructure to begin with. So it was it was pleasantly surprising to see that reflected in the in the results. So interesting. The nuances also I think will be so interesting to go back and look at over time when you're able to compare this with later data. Thanks for that question Clem. And Jen and Christine thanks for those responses. I see that we are nearing time now. Excuse me and I have one last question here. And it's from Allison Hitchens, who asks, did you, did you ask a question specific to student workers, some campuses tried to provide employment for their students, which had to be balanced with budget decisions. That's a really good question. I wanted to ask about student workers. And there was a decrease in student employment in the aggregate I don't remember the exact percentage but we did see overall that there were, were decreases in the amount of student workers that library directors were able to employ. We were curious to see if you know as as full time more permanent staff were affected in many of the ways Jen that you you went over already. If those positions were filled in any way with more temporary lower cost student workers and that just didn't really seem to to be evident in any of the data that we collected. Fascinating. Thanks for that question Allison. All right, I'm going to propose that I turn off the recording here and just invite any attendees who have questions or want to chat with Jen and Christine further about their findings please just hang on and raise your hand I'll be happy to turn on your microphones. So thanks to Jen and Christine for returning to CNI and sharing findings of this really fascinating study with us. And thank you so much to our attendees who joined us today. Hope to see you back at CNI soon. Take care everyone. Bye bye.