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This research highlights the scenarios that might serve as a strategic vision to describe a future beyond the current library, one which both guides provosts and creates a map for the transformation of human resources and technology in the university research libraries. The scenarios offer managerial leaders an opportunity to envision new roles for librarians and staff which brings a much needed focus on the development of human resources as well as a thought-stream to understand decisions which effectively and systematically move the organization toward a strategic vision.

These scenarios also outline possible future directions research libraries could take by focusing on perspectives from library directors, provosts, and administrators for human resources. The four case study scenarios introduce potential future roles for librarians and highlight the unsustainability of the current scholarly communications model as well as uncertain factors related to the political, social, technical, and demographic issues facing campuses. Given the changes institutions face, scenarios allow directors to include more uncertainty when developing and articulating a vision. These scenarios may start a discussion, before a strategic planning process, to sharpen the evaluations and measures necessary to monitor achievements that define the value of the library.

This chapter traces the history of digital libraries (DLs) in the United States through the funding sources that have supported DL research and development over the past decade and a half. A set of related questions are addressed: How have the mission and goals of funding agencies affected the types of projects that have been funded? What have been the deliverables from funded projects and how have the goals of the funding agencies shaped those deliverables? Funding agencies have exerted strong influence over research and development in DLs, and different funding agencies have funded different types of projects, with varying sets of concerns for driving the various fields that feed into DLs. This chapter will address the impact that DL funding has had on the development of research in the field of Library and Information Science, as well as on the practice of librarianship.

The chapter is a personal opinion piece designed to provoke thought and discussion.

It reviews the ways in which libraries have responded to technological change over the last 50 years.

The focus is very much on higher education libraries, however the conclusions also have general applicability. The chapter concludes that libraries have to rethink their approach to services and accept a cultural change which embeds them as part of an information flow rather than a filter for the organisation and encourages them to focus much more on integration with corporate mission. There are real implications for the practice of libraries and for a rethinking of their social value and nature.

The chapter synthesises many strands of thought and the practical recommendations for change are of undoubted value to the reader.

The world has been gripped by the severest global financial (and economic) crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. How did it come about, what is being done to alleviate its consequences and, vitally, what measures should be undertaken to ensure against its recurrence are therefore questions that must be satisfactorily addressed. Preventing ‘financial crises’ from ever happening again is of course completely out of the question, they being inherent to the economic system as we understand it; rather that of those of the ‘severest’ kind. Fortunately, a vast literature has been accumulating on these issues, so the intention here is not to add to it and reinforce the perception that economists will offer more opinions on a single issue than the total membership of any assembled group thereof for the purpose. Hence, this is confined to a consideration of the most convincing explanations. Owing to space limitations, I shall not examine the recommendations for future action in all the mentioned areas but will do so for what is being offered to cater for the capital adequacy and pro-cyclicality since they are of the essence and involve many players.