Project ‘Academic libraries of the future’ kicks off

The 18-month project, funded as part of a joint initiative, aims at helping higher education institutions, libraries and information services providers look at the challenges faced from a fresh focus and formulate strategies to ensure the sector continues to be a leading global force.

It is undertaken by Curtis+Cartwright Consulting and its partners include the British Library, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Research Information Network (RIN), Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL).

The study will address questions such as how will UK higher education be funded and operated in the long term future?; and what will be the information needs of users? It will also explore factors shaping the information industry, such as the digital revolution, the knowledge economy, students and researchers as ‘consumers’ and the global economic crisis.

As part of the project, a series of workshops will be held with the aim of imagining and describing possible futures for libraries. They will bring together a wide range of influential stakeholders, including institutional senior managers, librarians, funders, students, researchers, suppliers, technologists, legal specialists and others.

The first two workshops are taking place in February and March 2010 to scope out the broad global environment and consider possible futures for higher education and the information needs of users within these scenarios. These will be followed by smaller focused workshops during the summer of 2010 to gain a more in-depth analysis.

According to RIN, developing and implementing business strategies over a three- to five-year timescale is now commonplace in higher education. Looking beyond this horizon (over ten to 20 years, or more) is less common, and more challenging - but to improve decision-making and plan effectively for the future, this longer-term time scale must be considered.