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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.

The duration of an innovation process, from new idea to new business, may take many years. This makes it necessary to incorporate a vision of the future. The Cyclic Innovation Model (CIM) shows that aspects such as multiplicity (looking at multi-fold futures) and multidimensionality (looking at different aspects of the future) should be taken into account. Looking at the different actors involved in CIM, the future should be researched with an open mind (meaning that the transition path to the future should be kept wide open) and different time horizons should be taken into account.

Research models and practices change rapidly. While evidence of such changes includes cross-campus collaborations and multi-authored scholarship, faculty development opportunities also signal what is to come. In this case study, authors representing diverse disciplines examine what faculty development programs reveal about the future of academic research. The authors offer an analysis of faculty support programs across the country as a foundation, and then provide an examination of initiatives in place at their four-year regional comprehensive institution in the United States. The authors then report on the outcomes of these programs for research productivity, with a focus on opportunities that were available to all faculty across the university. Finally, the authors offer perspective on the future of academic research based on findings from examining these programs. The authors suggest that the future of research will focus on (1) collaborative design(s) of research-related support, (2) support structures and programs that encourage and facilitate cross-campus and interdisciplinary research collaborations and sharing, (3) incentive for integrating areas of research with teaching and service, and relatedly (4) programs that encourage faculty to span academic research with industry or community partnerships and collaborations, especially ones that can generate revenue or produce future research, development, or funding streams.

The chapter aims to reflectively discuss a participatory research project concerning the future of higher education in Hungary. This project can be understood as an ongoing methodological experiment which attempts to engage teachers and students, in order to reveal how key stakeholders think about the future of higher education. In line with this, this methodologically oriented chapter shows how different participatory methodologies can be combined in a so-called backcasting framework. This approach starts by describing the present situation, then moves beyond the present conditions so as to identify the cornerstones of an ideal future state. On the one hand, the chapter gives a detailed introduction to how our participatory research process was set up and what particular methodologies we used during this process. On the other hand, it critically reflects on the methodological and ethical challenges involved.

Academic library consortia activity has become an integral part of academic libraries’ operations. Consortia have come to assert considerable bargaining power over publishers and have provided libraries with considerable economic advantage. They interact with publishers both as consumers of publishers’ products, with much stronger bargaining power than individual libraries hold, and, increasingly, as rival publishers themselves. Are consortia changing the relationship between academic libraries and publishers? Is the role of academic library consortia placing academic libraries in a position that should and will attract the attention of competition policy regulators? Competition policy prohibits buying and selling cartels that can negatively impact the free market on which the Canadian economic system, like other Western economies, depends. Competition policy as part of economic policy is, however, only relevant where we are concerned with aspects of the market economy. Traditionally, public goods for the greater social and cultural benefit of society are not considered part of the market economic system. If the activities of academic library consortia are part of that public good perspective, competition policy may not be a relevant concern. Using evidence gained from in-depth interviews from a national sample of university librarians and from interviews with the relevant federal government policy makers, this research establishes whether library consortia are viewed as participating in the market economy of Canada or not. Are consortia viewed by librarians and government as serving a public good role of providing information for a greater social and cultural benefit or are they seen from a market-economic perspective of changing power relations with publishers? Findings show government has little in-depth understanding of academic library consortia activity, but would most likely consider such activity predominantly from a market economic perspective. University librarians view consortia from a public good perspective but also as having an important future role in library operations and in changing the existing scholarly publishing paradigm. One-third of librarian respondents felt that future consortia could compete with publishers by becoming publishers and through initiatives such as open source institutional repositories. Librarians also felt that consortia have had a positive effect on librarians’ professional roles through the facilitation of knowledge building and collaboration opportunities outside of the home institution.

To identify what scholars consider to be important and interesting for future research in social entrepreneurship (SE), this chapter analyzes 248 SE papers and generated 327 topics for future research. From these 327 topics, a modified Delphi process generated 27 underlying themes. Subject matter experts were surveyed as to how interesting each research topic is and the extent to which the topics lend themselves to theoretical or empirical development; this assessment was also used to calculate aggregate scores for each theme. In this chapter, we present all research topics that scored at or above 2.5 on a 5-point scale for both questions. We discuss the implications of both the method and the results of the study.

Purpose – In this chapter, we outline early sociological thinking on time rooted in various philosophies of time and review the relatively current research in the area of temporal perspective. Next, we define the scope of the social psychology of time and illustrate how and why social psychology has failed to properly and effectively include time as a central component of study. Finally, we link current thinking about time to group processes research, most directly to identity and social identity processes (though not exclusively), making clear the ways current and future approaches could benefit from including temporal perspectives.

Methodology – We review relevant research engaged with concepts related to time in psychology, sociology, and social psychology. On the foundation of our review and the identification of gaps in the literature, we provide insights and recommendations regarding how temporal perspectives may be adopted by existing knowledge bases in sociological social psychology.

Findings – As a conceptual chapter, this work presents no empirical findings. A review of the literature reveals a scarcity of research effectively embedding temporal perspectives in major areas of social psychological research.

Practical Implications – The recommendations we make for connecting temporal perspectives to existing research areas provide a practical foundation from which to develop new ideas.

Social Implications – This work contributes to the social psychology of time by detailing how time is an important, yet mostly overlooked, component to our understandings of many social psychological processes. In the effort to extend identity and social identity theory in specific, we add to the general knowledge of the self and self-processes via the incorporation of temporal perspectives.

Originality – This work is the first to explore how temporal perspectives in sociological social psychology are employed, but mostly, how they are underutilized. We make recommendations for how novel theoretical predictions may emerge by including perspectives about time in existing research programs.