Information Futures Commission: final report of the Steering Committee, July 2008

See also O'Brien et al (2008) "Scholarly Information in a Digital Age: choices for the University of Melbourne" available at http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/2427The Information Futures Commission was formed to explore how the scholarly information landscape is changing, understand what those changes mean for scholarly communication practices and make recommendations about how the University of Melbourne might respond. This report describes the Commission's extensive consultation process. We begin by briefly describing the environment in which we operate. We follow with a summary of what we have learned from our community and from assessments of the world in which we operate and our place within that world. We provide an analysis of the key points of agreement and, more importantly, the strategic questions and difficult choices that emerged from the consultation process. These are the matters where trade-offs must be made, where challenging decisions must be taken. We conclude with a set of principles derived from our understanding of the environment in which we operate. These principles have been applied in the development of the proposed strategy, providing the foundation for the choices we are about to make