Academic and professional publisher SAGE convened a roundtable in association with the British Library into the role of the academic library in an open access (OA) future in April this year. Chaired by publishing consultant Simon Inger and attended by an international panel of 14 senior librarians and other industry experts, the conclusions of this discussion have been published in a report, 'Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic libraries'.
The report is a summary of the discussion around what support and skills librarians will require in an OA future, and how institutions, publishers, funders and other parties should be supporting their library partners, including variation by discipline and geographic region. Representing librarians from the UK, Europe, USA and the Middle East, attendees indicated that the concept of the individual library is changing.
Panellists highlighted an important shift, recognising that attention will shift from the library to the librarian: the information professional will be the library of the future. Academic libraries and research communication will have to evolve as open access grows in importance, but while traditional roles may change, librarians will still play an important role in managing and advising on information and information-related budgets.
Open access calls for a greater move towards communication and working together. The report concluded that to remain an important part of the research process in institutions and beyond, the librarian has to be creative and support users in new ways through communication, collaboration and tools.
The report, 'Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic libraries', forms part of a suite of research-led resources commissioned by SAGE for the librarian community. The full report can be viewed online at http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/Library-OAReport.pdf.
