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The purpose of this article is to provide a vision for how academic libraries can assume a more central role in a future where open access (OA) publishing has become the predominant model for disseminating scholarly research articles.

The authors analyze existing trends related to OA policies and publishing, with an emphasis on the development of repositories managed by libraries to publish and disseminate articles. They speculate that these trends, coupled with emerging economic realities, will create an environment where libraries will assume a major role in the OA publishing environment. The authors provide some suggestions for how this major role might be funded.

The trends and economic realities discussed will lead to new roles for academic librarians and will change the existing roles.

This article provides insights for academic libraries and their institutions to consider a dramatic shift in the deployment of subscription dollars from a dysfunctional and largely closed scholarly communication system to one that provides open, unfettered access to research results.

The purpose of this article is to communicate how an academic library can establish and implement a realignment process to prepare itself to serve users in the 21^st century.

The authors employed a case study approach to present the challenges of realigning an academic library. They describe the collaborative and interactive process that OSU Libraries undertook to envision what a 21^st century academy library might demand and to realign its units to support this vision. They summarize the positive outcomes of this process and provide an overview of what next steps might be.

A combination of visioning exercises and collaborative study of the appropriate LIS literature were key to establishing the direction that the libraries' realignment would take and the eventual organizational structure the libraries implemented. The realignment activities not only emphasized collaboration among unit heads, but also emphasized the importance of clear communication, ongoing assessment, and connection to the university's overall strategic goals and realignment in order to guarantee eventual success.

This article describes a process that most academic libraries could emulate to shift the focus of legacy operations and departments to those that successfully meet the challenges of the twenty‐first century academic library.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the sustainability of cooperation models within research libraries networks in the humanities.

Changing research environment and budget constraints currently are the main challenges of research libraries networks: to cope with this pressure libraries need to build collective capacity through a strong model of collaboration and partnership and foster closer interaction between actors both from the library and the external world. In order to build effective and efficient cooperation models research libraries networks will first need to share a common vision and a well-focused organisation. Nevertheless, a multi-level approach should help them to identify their core functional requirements, the specialised needs of their users and a flexible cooperation structure able to maintain the financial sustainability of the system.

After illustrating the current challenges in the research libraries world, and how cooperation and collaboration issues have been connoting library management and activities, this work presents the methodology and the preliminary results of a research project which surveyed the URBS network, an international consortium of 12 libraries from academic and research institutions of several nations (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA) based in Rome, Italy.

This paper will be of interest and value to other research library networks or consortia with an interest in the development of new organisational models, and in the evaluation and assessment of their sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to share one uncommon way that an academic library moved toward more sustainable library operations and to share lessons learned in the implementation of a compost collection program in an academic library.

Case study.

The right collaboration is critical to successfully implementing a library composting program and challenges like working around supply purchasing hurdles, reducing contamination in the collection bins, and working out appropriate assessment techniques may be encountered.

Academic libraries can implement compost collections program if the proper infrastructure exists and the appropriate partnerships are established.

Academic libraries can be leaders in sustainable building operations and provide learning opportunities for the entire campus and surrounding community.

Very little published literature exists on implementing composting program in libraries of any kind. This case study helps to build that body of literature.