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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 addresses adaptation to dynamic, novel and uncertain military environments. These environments require a shift from a maneuver warfare paradigm to an asymmetric world where shifting alliances, questionable civilian loyalties, opaque cultures, and the requirement to maintain peace one day and combat the next makes for a particularly confusing situation. This new warfare paradigm requires adaptation to an uncertain, complex environment.

The initial section discusses a general cognitive model of visualization called RAVENS and its importance for adaptation developed specifically to address complex military environments. RAVENS posits that humans are inherently flexible decision makers and situation awareness depends on the ability of humans to create narrative visualizations that capture the overall context of complex military environments. Using the framework as a guideline, we will examine two important visualization research programs whose purpose is to allow military operators to rapidly adapt to volatile situations. The first program investigates cognitive effects such as the framing bias and their possible interactions with a variety of display concepts during a series of missile defense simulations. The experimenters presented risk as a spatial representation of uncertainty and target value that emphasized either expected population lost or expected population saved. The second program investigated the feasibility of using visualizations generated from Scheherazade (a coevolutionary algorithm) to aid MI analysts in predicting emergent tactics of terrorist groups during urban operations. Finally, we discuss the value of these approaches for providing coherent narrative understanding as called for in the RAVENS model.