Library Technology Guides

ITHAKA invests in Perlego to make course materials accessible and affordable. ITHAKA is investing in Perlego, a company dedicated to making knowledge more accessible. Perlego, founded in 2017, provides students around the world with affordable access to a digital library of over 1 million textbooks. To date, over 500,000 students have used Perlego in their coursework. [Full Announcement].

Path to Open books are now freely available to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities. America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities are now able to provide their more than 300,000 students and faculty with immediate access to the diverse, groundbreaking university press books being published on JSTOR as part of Path to Open. Developed in partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and University of North Carolina Press, Path to Open is a multi-year pilot program designed to increase access to diverse ideas and research through the publication of 1,000 academic books, each of which will become open access three years after initial release. HBCUs and TCUs are invited to join the Path to Open pilot immediately at no cost to them, gaining access to Path to Open books as they are published along with MARC records and supporting materials to help their communities use and engage this scholarship. [Full Announcement].

Florida Virtual Campus joins Path to Open. Florida Virtual Campus, a centralized service supporting the shared needs of Florida's 40 public colleges and universities, has joined Path to Open, a pilot program to support the open access publication of new groundbreaking scholarly books that will bring diverse perspectives and research to millions of people. Path to Open launched in 2023 as a collaboration among JSTOR, a nonprofit service of ITHAKA, The University of Michigan Press, the University of North Carolina Press, and the American Council of Learned Societies. The program now has the support of nearly 150 libraries around the world, and 42 presses. FLVC marks Path to Open's largest library consortia commitment to date with funding for the full 2024-2026 pilot period. This agreement gives all 2 and 4-year public colleges and universities in Florida access to Path to Open books as they are published and helps to ensure that more than 1,000 new books from university presses and their authors will be published through this new sustainable open access model. [Full Announcement].

Shared Infrastructure for the Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing. The scholarly publishing sector is undergoing its second digital transformation. In the first, we saw a massive shift from paper to digital, but otherwise publishing retained many of the characteristics of the print era. In this current second digital transformation, many of these structures, workflows, incentives, and outputs are being revamped in favor of new approaches that bring tremendous opportunities, and also non-trivial risks, to scholarly communication. [Full Announcement].

JSTOR and Choice jointly publish research presenting new insights on teaching with digital primary sources. JSTOR, a nonprofit service of ITHAKA, and Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries, have partnered to publish a new research report, Teaching and Learning with Digital Primary Sources: Nine insights into awareness, literacy, and collaboration between librarians, faculty, and students. Available first through a free upcoming webinar, the report examines the current state of digital primary source instruction and research challenges faced by librarians and faculty instructors. [Full Announcement].

Stony Brook University Libraries is partnering with ITHAKA S+R on Making AI Generative for Higher Education. Stony Brook University Libraries announced that it is partnering with Ithaka S+R and a cohort of select other universities on a new multi-year research project titled Making AI Generative for Higher Education. Leading this initiative is the Knowledge Management and Digital Assets Librarian, Dana Reijerkerk, who will be coordinating Stony Brook University's engagement in this project. The Libraries will work with colleagues in the Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs as well as the Office of Enterprise Risk Management. [Full Announcement].

New services for academic, research, and cultural institutions to share, preserve, and manage digital collections. ITHAKA announced a new set of services to help academic, research, and cultural institutions easily and affordably share, preserve, and manage their local digital collections. Using the same infrastructure that powers ITHAKA's nonprofit services JSTOR and Portico, institutions can now increase the reach and usefulness of their local digital collections, secure access for generations to come, and further the mission they share with one another and ITHAKA to improve access to knowledge worldwide. [Full Announcement].

Constellate makes it easier for faculty to teach text analysis and computational literacy. ITHAKA announced a major upgrade to Constellate, their platform that helps faculty easily and effectively teach text analysis and data skills. Constellate already integrates scholarly content and open educational resources into a cloud-based lab that faculty are using with students at colleges and universities across the United States, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong and Israel. Today's release unveils a new user dashboard and enhanced lab environment that make it even easier for faculty to help their students learn text analysis, ultimately gaining the skills they need to succeed in today's data-driven workplace. [Full Announcement].

ITHAKA and JSTOR in 2023: A letter from Kevin Guthrie. ITHAKA has facilitated this digital transformation for the research and education community through the provision of services like JSTOR, Artstor, Portico, and Ithaka S+R. These services have enabled our community to preserve and provide access to knowledge in ways that are more economical and impactful, and helped our leaders make informed, evidence-based strategic decisions. For 2023, we have identified three areas of focus: making more content universally accessible, preserving at-risk materials, and improving the utility of all this knowledge. [Full Announcement].

Collaborative Collection Development: a new IMLS-funded partnership. Ithaka S+R announced its participation in a new multi-institutional partnership to facilitate the cross-industry development of collaborative library collections. The project is generously funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant for Libraries, awarded to the National Information Standards Organization, the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration & Innovation, Lehigh University Libraries, and Ithaka S+R, along with 27 other partner organizations. [Full Announcement].

ITHAKA invests in open-annotation leader Hypothesis. ITHAKA is investing in the leading open annotation service Hypothesis. Hypothesis -- developed with funding from the Sloan, Mellon and other foundations -- allows users to make private, semi-private, or public annotations on any webpage, PDF, or document. This $2.5 million investment—made to Anno, the public-benefit corporation that is home to Hypothesis—furthers ITHAKA's mission to expand access to knowledge and education by supporting a key component of open higher education infrastructure: interoperable teaching and learning tools that positively impact student learning outcomes. [Full Announcement].

Big Ten Academic Alliance announces support for Reveal Digital. The Big Ten Academic Alliance has made a group commitment to support the new Reveal Digital publishing program Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements. All 15 member libraries are participating in this agreement, which totals more than $500,000. [Full Announcement].

Reveal Digital joins ITHAKA. Reveal Digital has joined the ITHAKA family. Reveal Digital is a small innovative company that uses a unique library crowd-funded model to support the development of open digital collections. In partnership with libraries, Reveal Digital raises funds to digitize, clear rights and make available special collections that have been aggregated from universities and other institutions. Now affiliated with ITHAKA, Reveal Digital will continue to provide an open access publishing model for special collections where libraries drive the program. [Full Announcement].

Piotr Adamczyk to lead image and museum relationships for ITHAKA. ITHAKA, the not-for-profit leader in advancing and preserving knowledge worldwide, announced that Piotr Adamczyk will join the organization as Director of Image Content and Museum Partnerships. [Full Announcement].

Alliance will enhance access to multimedia digital resources to support education and research. James Shulman, President of Artstor, and Kevin Guthrie, President of ITHAKA, today announced a new strategic alliance between the two nonprofit organizations that will benefit thousands of colleges, universities, schools, museums, and other educational institutions. Artstor, the provider of the Artstor Digital Library of images and the Shared Shelf platform for cataloguing and digital asset management, will now function under the umbrella of ITHAKA, which currently operates the services JSTOR, Portico and Ithaka S+R. [Full Announcement].

Deanna Marcum named Managing Director, Ithaka S+R. ITHAKA announced that Dr. Deanna Marcum has accepted the position of Managing Director, Ithaka S+R, effective January 1, 2012. Deanna will lead this growing not-for-profit service, which provides research and strategic consulting services that help transform scholarship and teaching. [Full Announcement].

International case studies reveal innovative strategies for financing digital resources in the non-profit sector. A new study, released today by Ithaka S+R and the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, illustrates the varied and creative ways in which leaders of digital initiatives, particularly those developed in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors, are managing to identify sources of support and generate revenue. [Full Announcement].