3 Essential Action Items

3 Essential action items identified by ACRL that academic libraries must take in order to meet the necessary transformation for the future are:

• move beyond being perceived primarily as the place for books
• the culture of academic libraries needs to replace the dominant attitudes of ownership and control with a penchant for useful services and guidance
• academic libraries must descend from what many people see as ‘an encreasingly isolated perch of presumed privilege’ (in the old days we called the Ivory Tower) and enter the rough and tumble fray to develop and deploy information services for a new age

Timeliness of communication is a must.

Fundamental changes in technology, research, teaching, and learning have created a very different context for the missions of academic libraries.

Part of the challenge is that academic libraries were defined primarily as places that held print resources – now most scholarly information is shunted about as digital.  “In many respects the academic library has become transparent” – visits to the library are infrequent but access to the digital resources that are funded out of the libraries budget are constant. 

http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/future/changingroles.htm

~ by metadatalib on May 14, 2007.