OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R have announced a new project - University Futures; Library Futures.
Both organisations are joining forces to carry out a collaborative project on the future of academic libraries, in the context of changes in the higher education landscape.
Throughout the period of enormous growth in the decades since World War II, libraries of all types have followed essentially the same pattern: they measured their effectiveness by the size of the collection. But libraries are not ends in themselves. They serve the communities and organisations of which they are a part—they serve the interests of their parent universities and colleges. Until recently, the collections model of libraries has meant that all academic libraries have measured their success in terms of how big their collections are—every library trying to be as much 'like Harvard' as possible. Some efforts to gather statistics have reinforced the notion that the biggest collection was the best, and smaller libraries imitated the process to determine which medium-sized or small library is best.
In this project, the research question is: what happens when libraries differentiate themselves in terms of services, not collection size; are there multiple models of success?
In this context, the current discussion of the future of libraries has two limitations. First, it often proceeds without reference to the universities of which they are a part. OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R argue that the most important long term influence on the library is the requirement placed on it by changing patterns of research and learning. These changing patterns, in turn, are shaped by the focus of the university and the directions it is taking. Second, it often presumes some homogeneity of approach or direction, different only in degree among libraries. This presumption of homogeneity encourages a view of academic libraries in which the research library is seen as a terminal point in evolution, rather than as one type among others. These limitations mean that despite considerable exploration, a robust view of library directions is yet to be developed. Different library types will have different futures, shaped by the needs of the institutions they serve. Accordingly, the organisations distinguish between general accounts of the future of libraries and their particular interest in developing a framework for understanding library futures.
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